LUXE 


W  I  L-DE.- 


JlhU^;^:^^  /f^^^' 


Great  Piano  Virtuosos 


The 

Great    Piano    Virtuosos 
of  Our  Time 

FROM  PERSONAL  ACQUAINTANCE 

Liszt,  Chopin,  Tausig, 
Henselt 


BY 

W.   VON  LENZ 

Author  of  ^^ Beethoven  et  ses  trots  Styles^  and  ''Beethoven^ 
eine  Kunststtidie."" 


TRANSLATED    FROM   THE   GERMAN    BY 
MADELEINE    R.     BAKER 


NEW  YORK 

G.     Schirmer 

MDCCCXCIX 


MUSI 


Copyright,  1899,  by  G.  Schirmer 


BERKELEY 
MUSIC  LIBRARY 

UNIVERSITY  OF 
CALIFORNIA 

k   M    t 


nL3'l7 

ORY    OF/l/ft^-^X 


TO    THE    MEM 
COUNTS    MICHAEL    AND    MATHIAS 
WIELHORSKI 
MY    FATHERLY    FRIENDS 

AND    BENEFACTORS 


I 


VOS,  MUSICS  PRINCIPES, 
MORITÜRÜS  SALUT  AT 


Note 

r^HE  first  part  of  the  following 
Recollections  of  my  musical  life  ap- 
peared in  1868  in  the  '*Neue  Bei'liner 
Musikzeitung"  Tausig  vcished  the  articles 
collected  and  published  separately,  and  cor- 
responded with  me  on  the  subject.  These 
essays  —  to  which  I  have  added  one  on 
Adolph  Henselt  —  will  now  have  a  wider 
circulation  than  would  be  possible  through 
the  columns  of  the  ''Neue  Berliner  Musik- 
zeitung" 

The    Author 


L 


Franz   Liszt 


Majore  cultu 


ranz    JLiszt 


ALL  the  great  pianists  of  the  first  half  of 
the  century,  were  personally  known  to  me: 
Field,  Hummel,  Moscheles,  Kalkbrenner. 
From  the  school  which  we  now  already  call  "old"" 
(excluding  Field,  who  went  his  own  peculiar  way), 
a  school  which,  if  not  founded  by  Hummel,  was 
at  least  essentially  influenced  by  him,  I  came  to 
the  new  era  of  the  pianoforte,  to  Liszt  and 
Chopin. 

Liszt  is  a  phenomenon  of  universal  musical  virtu- 
osity, such  as  had  never  before  been  known :  not 
simply  a  pianistic  wonder.  Liszt  is  a  phenomenon 
spreading  over  the  whole  domain  of  musical  pro- 
duction, and  creating  a  universal  standard  of  com- 
parison. 

Liszt  does  not  merely  play  piano;  he  tells,  at  the 
piano,  the  story  of  his  own  destiny,  which  is  closely 
linked  to,  and  reflects,  the  progress  of  our  time. 
Liszt  is  a  latent  history  of  the  keyboard,  himself 
its  cro^vning  glory.  To  him  the  piano  becomes  an 
approximate  expression  of  his  high  mental  culti- 
vation, of  his  views,  of  his  faith  and  being.  "WTiat 
does  piano-playing  matter    to   him! — ^^ Steig'   auf 

[1] 


Great  Piano  Virtuosos 

den  Thurm,  und  siehe  wie  die  Schlacht  sich  wendet "" 
["Climb  the  tower,  and  see  how  the  battle  goes"'] 
—  that  is  what  one  should  say  of  him;  how  far  in- 
quiry has  reached  into  the  domain  of  science,  how 
far  speculation  has  fathomed  musical  thought;  how 
it  goes  in  the  world  of  intellect — that  is  what  one 
has  to  learn  from  his  playing  (how  else  were  such 
playing  possible?),  and  to  learn  for  the  ßrst  time, 
for  one  could  never  go  so  far  alone. 
His  wish  to  become  a  priest  rose  from  the  inner- 
most core  of  his  being.  It  was  thematic.  The  man 
of  the  world  in  Liszt  is  but  an  episode  from  the 
theme.  To  the  priest  alone  are  the  portals  of  in- 
finity the  home  of  the  soul.  Priest  in  continuation 
of  Prophet;  and  Liszt  was  ever  a  prophet  from 
the  beginning  of  his  career. 

When  Liszt  thunders,  lightens,  sighs  on  the  piano 
that  "Song  of  Songs" — the  great  Bßat  major  So- 
nata for  Hammerklavier — by  Beethoven,  he  coins 
capital  for  mankind  out  of  the  ideas  of  the  great- 
est musical  thinker  the  world  has  ever  known, 
who  could  have  had  no  conception  of  such  a  ren- 
dering of  his  Hammerklavier  music;  he  wrote  his 
later  piano-music  (from  Op.  100  on)  for  the  tran- 
scendence (viewed  through  the  spectroscope  of  his 
[2] 


Franz   Liszt 


orchestral  conceptions  at  the  piano)  of  his  musical 
thought,  not  of  his  ^^?ö;20-thought. 
The  pianist  in  Liszt  is  an  apparition  [Gespenst], 
not  to  be  compressed  within  the  bounds  of  the 
house  drawn  by  schools  and  professors  ! 
The  old  proverb  applies  here:  "Quod  licet  Jovi^ 
non  licet  hovir 

Nothing  could  be  more  foolish  than  to  attempt  to 
imitate  Liszt,  or  even  to  use  him  as  a  measure  by 
which  to  criticise  others.  Where  Liszt  appears,  all 
other  pianists  disappear;  there  remains  only  the 
piano,  and  that  trembles  in  its  whole  body! 
Liszt  is  the  past,  the  present,  and  the  future  of 
the  piano;  how,  then,  should  he  find  time  to  be 
a  professor  and  pattern  besides  ?  He  is  the  spirit  of 
the  matter;  he  absorbs  the  conception.  How  can 
that  which  is  perishable  hope  to  vie  with  the  im- 
perishable.'^— This  entire  pianistic  stronghold  is  the 
material  side  of  the  matter;  it  was  never  the  spirit 
of  the  matter,  however  much  spirit  may  have  oc- 
cupied the  guest-chamber.  One  cannot  suspend  a 
ghost  as  a  barometer  in  the  sitting-room!  So 
Liszt  is  no  pattern,  only  the  beginning,  continua- 
tion, and  end!  Hence,  in  Liszt's  case,  any  com- 
parison of  any  given  performance  at  the  piano  is 
[3] 


Great   Piano   Virtuosos 

a  priori  out  of  the  question;  because  he  is  the  ex- 
ception, because  he  is  the  prophet  who  has  ceased 
to  be  a  plain  citizen,  in  order  to  become  a  soldier 
of  the  spirit  in  his  own  church,  his  own  ideas. 
Such  a  brain  must  be  rated  higher  than  a  piano, 
and  it  is  an  accidental  circumstance,  of  no  impor- 
tance, that  Liszt  plays  the  piano  at  all.  Perhaps, 
in  a  higher  sense  (majore  cultu),  this  is  in  fact 
not  the  case,  the  piano  being  merely  visible,  like 
the  tub  in  Mesmer's  case!  It  is  wholly  uncritical 
to  say  that  Liszt  does  this  or  that  differently  from 
some  one  else;  do  not  imagine  that  Liszt  does  any- 
thing— he  does  nothing  at  all;  he  thinks,  and  what 
he  thinks  takes  on  this  form.  That  is  the  process. 
Can  this  be  called  piano-playing?  "Thee  now  the 
body  leaveth,  and  God  the  soul  receiveth,"' '  for 
now  everything  leads  upward,  onward, — excelsior! 
Liszt,  then,  cannot  be  expected  to  practise  scales 
and  finger-exercises,  as  is  the  custom  among  schools 
and  professors  ! — Does  the  eagle  practise  flying? 
he  looks  upwards,  gazes  towards  the  sun,  un- 
folds his  pinions,  and  soars  towards  its  burning 
light! 

Such  is  the  relation  of  Liszt  to  the  piano,  and  it 

is    not    given    to   every   one    to   follow   his   flight, 

[4] 


Franz   Liszt 


thereby    forgetting    the    unhappy    instrument,    the 
starting-point ! 

I  will  relate  the  circumstances  which  brought  me 
to  Liszt,  as  one  makes  the  acquaintance  of  such  a 
spirit  in  no  ordinary  way;  one  gains  access  to 
him,  or  one  does  not.  That  is  the  whole  matter, 
and  signifies  much  in  either  case. 
In  1828  (forty-three  yeai-s  ago!)  I  was  nineteen 
years  old,  and  had  come  to  Paris  to  pursue  my 
studies  (humamores  litt  er  ce)  on  a  broader  scale, 
above  all  to  continue  my  work  in  French  chan- 
nels, and  to  take  piano-lessons  (as  people  used  to 
say),  but  with  Kalkbrenner.  Kalkbrenner  was  a  na- 
tive of  Berlin,  of  Jewish  extraction;  in  Paris  he  was 
the  Joconde  of  the  ^aZow-piano,  under  Charles  the 
Tenth.  He  was  a  knight  of  the  Legion  of  Honor, 
and  farmer-general  of  all  permissible  pianistic  ele- 
gancies. The  beautiful  Camille  Mock,  later  Mme. 
Pleyel — to  whose  charms  neither  Liszt  nor  Chopin 
was  indifferent — was  the  favorite  pupil  of  the  irre- 
sistible Kalkbrenner.  I  heard  her  play  from  the 
manuscript,  with  Kalkbrenner  and  Onslow,  the  lat- 
ter's  sextuor.  It  was  at  the  home  of  Baron  Tre- 
mont,  a  tame  musical  Maecenas  of  the  time,  in  Paris. 
She  played  the  piano  as  one  wears  an  elegant  shoe, 
[5] 


Great  Piano   Virtuosos 

when  one  is  a  pretty  Parisian.  Nevertheless,  I  was 
in  danger  of  becoming  Kalkbrenner's  pupil,  but 
Liszt  and  my  good  star  ordered  it  otherwise.  On 
the  way  to  Kalkbrenner  (who  plays  a  note  of  his, 
nowadays?),  as  I  was  walking  along  the  boulevards, 
I  read  among  the  theatre-posters  of  the  day,  which 
exercised  so  powerful  an  attraction,  the  notice  of 
an  extra  concert  (it  was  already  November)  to  be 
given  at  the  Conservatoire  by  Mr.  Liszt,  with 
Beethoven's  Eflat  majo?-  Piano  Concerto  heading  the 
programme. 

Beethoven  was  then  (and  not  only  in  Paris)  Para- 
celsus personified,  in  the  concert-room.  Of  Beethoven, 
at  that  time,  I  knew  only  that  I  had  been  fright- 
ened by  his  ladder-like  notes  in  the  D  major  Trio^ 
and  in  the  Fantasia  with  chorus,  which  I  had  once 
opened  (and  at  once  closed)  in  a  music-store  in  my 
native  city,  Riga,  where  more  was  doing  in  trade 
than  in  music. 

How  astonished  I  should  have  been  if  some  one 
had  told  me — as  I  innocently  stood  before  the 
advertising-column  in  Paris,  and  learned  from  the 
notice  that  there  were  such  things  as  piano-con- 
certos by  Beethoven — that  some  time  in  the  fu- 
ture I  should  write  six  volumes  in  German,  and 
[6] 


Franz   Liszt 


two  in  French,  about  Beethoven !  I  had  heard  of 
the  septuor.  In  those  days  Beethoven  was  called 
J.  N.  Humjnel! 

From  the  concert-notice,  I  concluded  that  any  one 
who  could  publicly  play  a  Beethoven  piano-con- 
certo must  be  a  remarkable  person,  and  of  quite 
a  different  growth  from  Kalkbrenner,  the  composer 
of  the  Fantasia  Effusio  Muska.  That  this  Ef- 
fusio  was  a  ti^umpery  piece,  so  much  I  already 
understood,  young  and  happy  though  I  was. 
It  was  in  this  manner — on  the  fateful  Paris  boule- 
vards— that  I  first  saw  the  name  of  Liszt,  which 
was  to  fill  the  world; — on  the  boulevards  where  one 
fancies  one  is  contributing  one''s  part  to  the  daily 
history  of  Europe  when  one  takes  a  walk ! 
That  concert-notice  was  destined  to  have  a  lasting 
influence  on  my  life.  I  can  still  see,  after  the  lapse 
of  so  many  years,  the  color  of  the  fateful  paper; 
gigantic  black  letters  on  a  bright  yellow  ground 
{la  coideur  d'lstin^uee  of  those  days,  in  Paris). 
I  drove  straight  to  Schlesinger,  whose  place  was  at 
that  time  the  musical  exchange  of  Paris,  in  the 
Rue  Richelieu. 

"Where  does  Mr.  Liszt  live.^"  I  demanded,  and 
pronounced  it  Litz,  for  the  Parisians  never  got  any 

[7] 


Great  Piano  Virtuosos 

further  with  Liszt  than  Litz.  That  good  German, 
Rudolf  Kreutzer,  who  chanced  at  one  time  to  be 
their  best  vioHn-virtuoso,  they  called  Kretch,  where- 
fore the  man  to  whom  Beethoven  dedicated  his 
great  violin-sonata,  Op.  47,  had  his  cards  engraved 
thus:  Rodolph  Kreutzer,  prononcez  Bertrand.  The 
Parisians  understood  that;  Parisians  are,  after  all, 
very  "so,*"  as  Falstaff  says. 

Liszfs  address  was  Rue  Montholon,  far  away,  where 
Paris  imagines  that  she  can  become  a  mountain! 
What  has  Twt  Paris  imagined — and  what  have  we 
ever  refused  to  believe  of  her?  Mountain  and  valley. 
Heaven  and  Hell — all  these  has  she  imagined  her- 
self to  be! 

They  gave  me  Liszfs  address  at  Schlesinger'^s  with- 
out any  hesitation,  but  when  I  asked  litz's  price, 
and  made  known  my  wish  to  study  with  Litz,  they 
all  laughed  at  me,  and  the  clerks  behind  the  desk 
giggled  with  them,  and  they  all  said  at  once:  ^^He 
has  never  given  a  lesson,  he  is  no  piano-teacher T 
I  felt  that  I  must  have  said  something  very  stupid ! 
But  the  reply:  ^'' no  piano-teacher,''^  pleased  me,  never- 
theless, and  I  made  my  way  at  once  to  Rue  Mon- 
tholon. 

Liszt  was  at  home.  That  was  a  very  unusual  thing, 
[8] 


Franz   Liszt 


his  mother  told  me— an  excellent  woman  with  a 
German  heart,  who  pleased  me  extremely,  —  her 
Franz  was  almost  always  at  church,  she  said,  and  — 
above  all  things — busied  himself  no  more  with  music! 
Those  were  the  days  when  Liszt  wished  to  become 
a  Saint  Simonist;  when  Pere  Enfantin  infested 
Paris;  when  Lamennais  wrote  the  Paroles  (Tun  Croy- 
ant,  and  the  Peau  de  chagrin  of  Balzac  followed 
close  upon  his  Scenes  de  la  vie  privee. 
It  was  a  grand  epoch,  and  Paris  the  navel  of  the 
earth.  Rossini  lived  there,  and  Cherubini,  also 
Auber,  Hale'vy,  Berlioz,  and  the  great  violinist  Bail- 
lot  ;  Victor  Hugo,  who  was  afterwards  banished  for 
political  reasons,  had  published  his  Orientales,  and 
Lamartine  was  just  recovering  from  the  exertion  of 
his  Meditations  poetiques.  We  should  soon  be  in  the 
midst  of  the  July  revolution,  but  we  were  still  under 
the  Martignac  ministry. 

Odilon-Barrot  spoke  C07i  sordini  in  the  Chamber, 
Cuvier  lectured  in  the  Jardin  des  Plantes,  Guizot 
and  Villemain  in  the  Sorbonne;  Cousin  had  discov- 
ered German  philosophy;  Lerminier — Savigny  and 
Ganz — one  ran  from  one  to  the  other!  Scribe  was 
doing  his  turn  at  the  theatre,  where  Mile.  Mars 
was  still   playing.   Dumas   had,   after   the   German 

[9] 


Great  Piano   Virtuosos 

style,  given  his  first  and  best  piece,  Henry  III  et  la 
Cour,  to  the  Theatre  Fran^ais,  where  the  fii-st  per- 
formance was  repressed  by  the  ministry,  because 
there  was  something  in  it  about  "LiHes.''  Paris 
piqued  herself  upon  possessing  both  the  Classic  and 
the  Romantic  Schools,  and  these  factions  were  at 
swords'  points.  During  the  reign  of  Charles  X., 
there  were  masked  balls  at  court,  at  which  the 
Duchesse  de  Berry  appeared  as  Maria  Stuart,  the 
Due  de  Chartres  as  Francis  I.;  the  Duchesse  de 
Berry'^s  lovely  foot  was  much  talked  of,  and  Sal- 
vandy  said — at  the  Due  d'Orleans"*  ball  in  the  Palais 
Royal — "We  are  dancing  on  a  volcano.''  George 
Sand  was  not  yet  well  known — Chopin  not  yet  in 
Paris.  Marie  Taglioni  danced  at  the  Grand  Opera, 
Habenek,  a  German  master,  conducted  the  Elite 
Orchestra  at  the  Conservatoire — where  the  Pari- 
sians, one  year  after  Beethoven's  death,  heard,  for 
the  first  time,  some  of  his  music.  Malibran  and 
Son  tag  sang  the  "tourney"  duet  in  Tancredi  at  the 
Italian  Opera.  It  was  the  winter  of  1828-1829; 
Baillot  played  in  quartets,  and  Rossini  gave  his 
Tell  early  in  the  New  Year. 

In  Liszt  I  found  a  pale,  haggard  young  man,  with 

unspeakably   attractive   features.   He   was   reclining 

[10] 


Franz   Liszt 


on  a  broad  sofa,  apparently  lost  in  deep  reflection, 
and  smoking  a  long  Turkish  pipe.  Three  pianos 
stood  near.  He  did  not  make  the  slightest  motion 
when  I  entered — did  not  even  seem  to  notice  me. 
When  I  explained  to  him,  in  French — at  that  time 
no  one  presumed  to  address  him  in  any  other  lan- 
guage— that  my  family  had  sent  me  to  Kalkbrenner, 
but  that  I  came  to  him  because  he  dared  to  play  a 
Beethoven  Concerto  in  public — he  seemed  to  smile; 
it  was,  however,  like  the  glitter  of  a  dagger  in  the 
sunlight. 

"Play  me  something,*"  said  he,  with  indescribable 
sarcasm,  which,  nevertheless,  did  not  hurt  my  feel- 
ings— any  more,  for  instance,  than  one  feels  insulted 
when  it  thunders. 

"I  will  play  the  Kalkbrenner  Sonata  for  the  left 
hand,*"  said  I,  feeling  that  I  had  chosen  well. 
^'That  I  will  not  hear,  I  do  not  know  it,  and  I  do 
not  care  to  know  it!""  he  answered,  with  yet  stronger 
sarcasm  and  scarcely  concealed  scorn. 
I  felt  that  I  was  playing  a  pitiable  role — perhaps 
I  was  expiating  the  sins  of  some  one  else,  of  some 
Parisian.  However,  I  said  to  myself,  as  I  looked  at 
this  young  Parisian — for  in  appearance  he  was  thor- 
oughly Parisian — that  he  must  surely  be  a  genius; 

[11] 


Great   Piano   Virtuosos 

and   thus,  without  further   skirmishing,   I  did  not 
care  to  be  driven  from  the  field  by  any  Parisian. 
With  modest,  but  firm  step  I  approached  the  near- 
est piano. 

"Not  that  one!''  cried  Liszt,  without  in  the  least 
changing  his  half-recumbent  position  on  the  sofa, 
"there,  at  the  other  one!" 

I  walked  to  the  second  piano.  At  that  time  I  was  ab- 
sorbed in  the  Invitation  to  the  Dance ;  I  had  married 
it  out  of  pure  love,  two  years  before,  and  we  were 
still  in  our  honeymoon.  I  came  from  Riga,  where  the 
unexampled  success  of  Der  Freischütz^  had  prepared 
the  way  for  Weber's  piano  compositions,  while  in 
Paris  Der  Freischütz  was  called  Robin  (!)  des  hois, 
and  was  embellished  by  Berlioz  with  recitative! 
I  had  studied  with  good  masters.  When  I  tried  to 
strike  the  three  first  A  flats  I  found  it  quite  impos- 
sible to  make  the  insti-ument  give  forth  a  sound — 
what  was  the  matter?  I  struck  hard;  the  Aflat 
sounded,  but  quite  piano.  I  appeared  very  foolish,  I 
felt  sure  of  that,  but  without  losing  courage  I  went 
bravely  on  to  the  entrance  of  the  first  chord — then 
Liszt  got  up,  came  over  to  me,  pulled  my  right  hand 
off  the  keyboard  and  asked:  "What  is  that?  That 
begins  well! 

[12] 


Franz   Liszt 


"I  should  think  it  did,*"  I  answered,  with  the  pride 
of  a  parish  clerk  for  his  pastor,  "that  is  by  Weber!*" 
"Has  he  ^mtten  for  the  piano,  too?""*  he  asked,  as- 
tounded. "Here,  we  only  know  his  Robin  des  bois!''^ 
"Certainly  he  has  written  for  the  piano,  and  more 
beautifully  than  any  one  else,"  was  my  equally  sur- 
prised answer.  "I  carry  in  my  trunk,"*"*  I  continued, 
"two  Polonaises,  two  Rondos,  four  Variation-Num- 
bers,3  four  Sonatas;  one  of  the  Sonatas,  which  I 
studied  with  Yehrstaedt  in  Geneva,  contains  the 
whole  of  Switzerland,  and  is  inexpressibly  beautiful 
— in  it  all  lovely  women  smile  at  once — it  is  in 
Aflat  major — you  can't  imagine  how  beautiful  it 
is,  no  one  has  ^vritten  anything  to  compare  with  it 
for  the  piano,  believe  me.'"* 

I  spoke  from  my  heart,  and  so  con\ancingly  that 
Liszt  was  strongly  impressed. 

Presently  he  said  in  his  most  winning  tone:  "Please 
bring  me  ever}i:hing  you  have  in  your  trunk,  and, 
Jbr  the  first  time  in  my  life,  I  will  give  lessons — to 
you — because  you  have  introduced  me  to  Weber's 
piano-music,  and  because  you  did  not  allow  youi^self 
to  be  discouraged  by  the  hard  action  of  this  piano. 
I  ordered  it  myself;  one  scale  played  on  such  a  piano 
is  equal  to  ten  on  any  other;  it  is  a  completely  im- 
[13] 


Great  Piano  Virtuosos 

possible  piano.  It  was  a  mauvaise  plaisanter'ie  on  my 
part — but  why  did  you  speak  of  Kalkbrenner  and 
his  Sonata  for  the  left  hand?  But  now,  play  me  your 
piece  (^  voire  chose '')  that  begins  so  curiously.  That 
piano  you  first  tried  is  one  of  the  finest  instruments 
in  Paris.''' 

Then  I  played,  most  enthusiastically,  the  Invitation^ 
but  only  the  Cantilena,  marked  wiegend  (swaying, 
rocking),  in  two  parts.  Liszt  was  charmed  with  the 
composition.  "You  must  bring  me  that,'"*  said  he, 
"we  will  interpret  it  to  each  other!" 
Thus  the  last  letter  of  the  alphabet  came  to  the 
first. 

In  our  first  lesson,  Liszt  could  scarcely  tear  himself 
away  from  the  piece.  He  played  through  the  dif- 
ferent parts  again  and  again;  tried  various  rein- 
forcements; played  the  second  part  of  the  minor 
movement  in  octaves,  and  was  inexhaustible  in  his 
praise  of  Weber.  And  what,  indeed,  did  one  find  at 
that  time  in  the  piano-repertory.?  The  bland  master- 
joiner  Hummel ;  Herz;  Kalkbrenner,  and  Moscheles; 
nothing  plastic,  dramatic,  or  speaking,  for  the 
piano;  Beethoven  was  not  yet  understood;  of  his 
thirty -two  Sonatas,  three  were  played  (!) — the  Aflat 
major  Sonata  with  the  variations  (Op.  26),  the 
[14] 


Franz   Liszt 


C  sharp  minor  quasi  Fantasia,  and  the  Sonata  in 
F  minor,  which  a  publisher's  fancy — not  Beethoven 
— christened  appassionata.  The  five  last  ones  passed 
for  the  monstrous  abortions  of  a  German  idealist 
who  did  not  know  how  to  write  for  piano.  People 
undei-stood  only  Hummel  and  Co.;  Mozart  was  too 
old-fashioned,  and  did  not  write  such  passages  as 
Herz,  Kalkbrenner,  Moscheies, — to  say  nothing  of 
the  lesser  lights. 

In  the  midst  of  this  "Flowery  Kingdom^  dwelt 
Liszt,  and  one  must  take  this  into  account,  in  order 
to  grasp  the  greatness  of  the  man  who  discovered 
Weber  and  his  own  genius  at  the  piano,  when  he 
was  but  twenty  years  old ! 

Liszt  was  wholly  enraptured  with  Weber^s  Aflat 
major  Sonata.  I  had  studied  it  in  Geneva,  with 
Vehrstaedt,'^  and  expressed  in  my  rendering  the 
true  spirit  of  the  composition.  Liszt  proved  this  to 
me  by  the  way  he  listened,  by  his  gestures,  by  his 
exclamations  of  approval.  We  were  as  one  man,  in 
our  admiration  for  Weber. 

This  great  romantic  poem  for  the  piano  begins  with 
a  tremolo  in  the  bass,  on  Aflat.  No  Sonata  ever 
began  that  way,  before!  It  is  like  the  sunrise  over 
an  enchanted  forest  wherein  the  action  takes  place! 
[15] 


Great  Piano  Virtuosos 

The  uneasiness  of  my  master  over  the  first  part 
of  the  First  Allegro  became  so  great  that,  before 
I  came  to  the  close,  he  shoved  me  aside,  saying: 
"Wait — wait!  what  is  that?  I  must  play  that  my- 
self !" — I  had  never  before  heard  anything  like  that ! 
Think  of  a  genius  like  Liszt,  but  twenty  years 
old,  coming  into  contact,  for  the  first  time,  Anth 
such  a  capital  composition — with  the  apparition 
of  that  Knight  in  Golden  Armor,  Weber ! 
He  tried  the  first  part  over  and  over  again  in 
various  ways;  at  the  passage  (in  the  dominant)  in 
Eflat  at  the  close  of  the  first  part,  he  said:  "It  is 
marked  ligato  there,  would  it  not  be  better  to  make 
it  pp.  staccato  (pique)?  Leggermente  is  prescribed 
there,  too."'  He  experimented  in  every  direction. 
So  I  had  the  privilege  of  observing  how  one  genius 
looks  upon  the  work  of  another  and  turns  it  to  his 
owTi  account!  So  we  learned  some  special  lesson 
every  day,  from  our  two  hours'*  sojourn  with  Weber! 
"Now,  how  is  the  second  part  of  the  first  Allegro  ?'" 
asked  Liszt,  as  he  examined  it.  It  seemed  to  me 
quite  impossible  that  any  one  could  read  at  sight 
this  part  through  which  the  theme  is  carried  in 
crowded  octaves  several  pages  long! 
"That  is  very  hard,''  said  Liszt,  "and  the  Coda  is 
[16] 


Franz  Liszt 


still  harder;  to  hold  the  whole  together  in  this  cen- 
trifugal figure  near  the  end  (thirteen  measures 
before  the  close)  is  very  difficult.  This  passage  (in 
the  second  part — of  course  in  the  principal  key, 
Aflat)  we  will  not  play  staccato,  that  would  be 
somewhat  affected  (recherche) ;  neither  will  we  make 
it  liß'ato,  that  is  too  thin;  we  will  make  it  spiccato; 
let  us  swim  between  the  two  waters'"  (nageons  entre 
les  deux  eaux!). 

If  I  admired  the  fire  and  life,  the  spiritual  passion 
in  Liszt^s  production  of  the  first  part — in  the  second 
part  I  was  astounded  by  his  confident  repose  and 
certainty,  the  way  in  which  he  held  himself  back 
in  order  to  reserve  his  strength  for  the  last  attack ! 
So  young  and  so  wise  !  I  said  to  myself;  I  felt  dis- 
heartened and  discouraged. 

I  learned  more  from  Liszt  in  the  first  four  measures 
of  the  Andante  of  that  Sonata,  than  I  had  gotten 
in  years,  from  my  earlier  masters. 
"This  exposition  is  to  be  after  the  manner  of  Baillot 
when  he  plays  in  quartet,  the  accompanying  parts 
are  in  the  lifted  sixteenth-notes ;  but  Baillot^s  parts 
are  very  good,  you  must  not  make  them  inferior  to 
his.  You  have  a  good  hand,  you  can  learn  it;  look 
sharp,  it  is  not  easy — one  can  move  stones  with 
[17] 


Great  Piano   Virtuosos 

that;  I  can  imagine  how  the  piano-hussars  chase 
through  that !  I  shall  never  forget  that  I  became 
acquainted  with  that  Sonata  through  you.  Well,  you 
shall  learn  something  from  me;  I  will  tell  you  every- 
thing I  know  about  our  insti-ument.*" 
The  thirty-second-note  figure  in  the  bass  of  the 
Andante  (thirty-fifth  measure)  one  too  often  hears 
played  as  a  passage  for  the  left  hand;  the  figure 
should  be  expressed  caressingly,  it  should  be  a 
violoncello  solo  amoroso!  So  Liszt  played  it;  but 
lent  terrible  majesty  to  the  octave-irruption  upon 
the  second  theme  in  C,  which  Henselt  calls  the 
"Ten  Commandments'" — a  capital  title. 
How  can  I  begin  to  express  what  Liszt  did  with  the 
Menuetto  capriccioso  and  Rondo  of  the  Sonata,  the 
very  first  time  he  saw  these  inspired  compositions? 
What  was  there  not  in  his  treatment  of  the  clarinet 
solo  in  the  trio  of  the  Menuetto,  the  modulation  of 
that  cry  of  longing,  the  winding  ornamentation  of 
the  Rondo  ! 

After  considering  the  composer's  manner  of  handling 
the  piano,  and  of  writing  for  it,  one  may  confidently 
say  of  the  Weber  sonatas  that — as  an  expression  of 
the  Instrument,  as  specific  piano-music — they  leave 
the  Beethoven  sonatas  behind  (not  as  musical  ideas 
[18] 


Franz   Liszt 


for  which  the  piano  is  the  medium  of  expression). 
The  Mozart  sonatas  are  cartoons  for  quartets,  the 
Beethoven  sonatas,  symphonic  rhapsodies ;  but  the 
noble  Weber  sonatas — as  such — are  the  happiest 
expression  of  the  piano,  in  its  most  happy  mood. 
The  piano  of  Weber  is  quite  innocent  of  quartet  or 
symphony;  it  is  self-dependent,  self-sufficient,  con- 
scious piano,  and  opened  the  door  to  the  New  School, 
to  the  treatment  of  the  instrument  by  Liszt  and 
Chopin. 

And  has  there  ever  been  manifested  greater  genius 
in  the  handling  of  the  piano,  than  is  found  in 
Weber's ^ri-^  Sonata — the  one  in  C  major.^ 
One  is  astounded  at  this  work  of  the  year  1813  (in 
which  it  was  criticized  by  that  great  blindwoman, 
the  Allgemeine  musikalische  Zeitung),  a  work  which 
may  have  been  composed  still  earlier, — that  had 
emancipated  itself  in  such  a  degree  from  the  forms 
controlling  musical  thought  sixty  years  (!)  ago,  and 
from  all  social  and  socio-political  relations  and  con- 
ditions in  life  !  For  in  Art  we  do  not  part  the  spirit 
from  the  form.  The  paternal  home,  the  hearth,  the 
household  altar,  the  häusliche  Jahreszeit,  are  the 
motives  of  the  Weber  Sonata  in  C ;  the  youthful 
soul  thus  finds  expression  for  its  impulse  towards 
[19] 


Great  Piano  Virtuosos 

the  unknown  country  which  lies  behind  the  narrow 
precincts  of  his  homely  native  town  !  This  longing 
supplied  Weber  with  words  for  his  sonata-poem  in 
C,  a  second  Glocke. 

Vom  Mädchen  reisst  sich  stolz  der  Knabe !  — 
is  the  clear  meaning  of  the  diminished  chord  at  the 
beginning,  through  which  Weber's  poem  rushes  into 
life. 

The  Weber  sonatas  unite  us  to  life;  Beethoven's 
relation  to  life — at  the  piano — is  that  of  the 
preacher  to  the  parish. 

Of  Liszt's  magnificent  interpretation  of  Weber,  of 
the  Alexandrian  triumphal  processions  he  made 
throughout  Europe  with  Weber's  piano-composi- 
tions—^especially  his  Concertstiich — the  world  knows, 
and  future  generations  will  talk  about  it. 
I  now  come  to  a  thought,  respected  Reader,  which 
I  fancy  is  original,  because  no  one  else  has  spoken 
it,  and  because  it  explains  Liszt's  wonderful  manner 
of  writing  for  the  piano  as  arising  from  esoteric 
causes,  and  gives  to  his  mechanical  difficulties  an 
externally  artificial  appearance. 

I  understand  Liszt's  manner  of  writing  for  piano  as 
a  satire  on  the  distinctions  of  rank,  the  convention- 
alities and  absurdities  of  the  early  Parisian  saloiis, 
[20] 


Franz   Liszt 


which,  in  their  pitiful  puerility,  through  three  dif- 
ferent forms  of  Parisian  government,  I  had  opportu- 
nity to  note.  These  weak  pretensions  of  every  sort, 
constituted  in  those  days  the  difference  between 
France  and  Germany,  and  between  France  and  the 
fi'eer  atmosphere  of  St.  Petei^sburg,  where  the  Artist, 
as  the  epitome  of  culture,  is  equal  in  rank  to  the 
highest -born  of  the  land ;  there,  the  relation  of  the 
artist  to  the  world  about  him,  turns  rather  in 
the  opposite  extreme,  and  this  condition  of  affairs 
is  not  always  conducive  to  his  own  happiness. 
The  difficulties  of  Liszfs  style  are — so  to  speak — 
variations  upon  his  own  Parisian  theme :  "  Stirb, 
Vogel,  oder^rm  / "'  5 

Liszt  tossed  these  technical  difficulties  in  the  faces 
of  the  Parisians: — "I  require  no  thanks,  ladies,'" 
says  he ;  "  do  this  after  me,*"  says  he,  "  who  and 
what  are  you  ? "  he  asks.  He  who  did  not  live  in 
Paris,  was  not  to  be  considered  as  living  at  all.  Of 
this  city  Liszt  was  at  once  the  scoui'ge  and  the  dar- 
ling. His  method,  hard  to  describe,  is  an  expression 
of  his  native,  unparalleled  pianistic  technique,  and  it 
would  be  a  great  mistake  to  imagine  that  any  one 
could  ever  approach  such  individuality,  no  matter 
how  thoroughly  he  might  overcome  the  difficulties 
[SI] 


Great  Piano   Virtuosos 

of  his  piano-mechanism.  It  has  been  said :  "  Let 
all  composers  assemble,  and  let  each  instrument 
the  simple  chord  of  C  major;  Beethoven's  chord 
would  be  Beethoven  !"  That  is  the  kernel  of  the 
whole  matter  !  It  is  not  otherwise  with  Liszt ;  let  all 
the  pianists  come  together  and  attack  the  Eflat 
major  Piano  Concerto  by  Beethoven  (to  take  this  ai> 
an  example) ;  Liszt's  first  stroke  will  betray  the  fact 
that  it  is  he  and  no  other !  His  phantasy  (imagina- 
tion) is  imponderable ;  it  is  disembodied ;  all  other 
pianists  are  lost  in  the  shadow  cast  by  Liszt ;  he  is 
a  doctor  like  Faust^  and  we  are  his  Warier ! 
The  friendly  reader  of  these  leaves  of  remembrance, 
has  not  my  permission,  after  noting  our  criticism  of 
others,  to  ask  :  But  Liszt  ? 

That  is  just  my  point :  "  That  is  the  humour  of  it," 
says  Pistol ;  that  was  our  meaning — Liszt  is  an 
apparition  ! 

Since  one  has  to  go  to  Rome  in  order  to  see  Liszt — 
to  say  nothing  at  all  about  hearing  him ; — ever 
since  Liszt  turned  his  back  upon  the  public,  one 
has  only  the  right  to  speak  of  having  heard  him, 
and  must  no  longer  call  him  a  pianist — Liszt  may 
be  likened  to  a  dead  man,  who  fortunately  is  still 
alive — a  pianist  he  is  not.  In  his  personality,  he  is 
[  22  ] 


Franz   Liszt 


an  image  of  our  day,  in  which  more  happens  than 
formerly  took  place  in  centuries ;  apart  from  his 
musical  hegemony,^  Liszt  is  one  of  the  great  intel- 
lects of  the  century. 

As  for  the  explanation  and  proper  view  of  Liszfs 
particular  manner  of  WTiting ;  of  himself,  of  his 
favored  nature,  I  may  say :  Art  is  the  ideal  Truth 
of  earthly  life,  she  is  the  disembodied  Truth.  She 
can  exhibit  hei-self  in  diverse  ways.  The  difficulties 
in  Liszt  are  nothing  external — they  are  a  key  to  his 
inmost  being.  Were  these  difficulties  but  outwardly 
represented — as  one  but  too  often  experiences — 
they  would  remain  something  outward  and  super- 
ficial— the  clod  would  cling  to  them,  and  the  spirit 
would  remain  with  the  composer. 


[23] 


Chopin 


n  nefaut  pas  s'en  nourrir^ 
mais  s'en  servir  comme 
cCune  essence,         Pascal 


Chopin 


EUROPE,  from  Madrid  to  St.  Petersburg,  was 
lionizing  Liszt,  when,  in  1842,  we  again 
found  ourselves  in  Paris,  where  Louis  Phi- 
lippe had  become  King.  Twelve  years  had  elapsed 
since  the  year  1830,  when  the  French  nation  hung 
upon  the  word  of  the  Citizen  King;  it  was,  never- 
theless, a  great  and  stirring  time,  a  time  of  ideas, 
and  Paris,  through  the  influence  she  exercised  on 
manners  and  customs — but  still  more  through  the 
belief,  univei^sally  shared,  in  her  dictatorial  suprem- 
acy— was  the  central  Sun  in  the  constellation  of 
Europe. 

Life  had  become  elegantly  frivolous ;  under  Charles 
X.  it  had  been  simply  corrupt.  Then,  Vice  had 
worn  its  livery ;  now  it  was  transformed  into  a 
demi-monde^  with  all  sorts  of  socially  authorized 
titles,  with  the  accepted  grades  of  "  Duchesse,'" 
"Camelia,'"  etc.  "Grisettes""  were  promoted  to  "Lo- 
rettes'^ — a  cognomen  which,  if  I'm  not  mistaken, 
originated  with  Thiers,  or  some  gi*eat  politician  of 
the  time,7  and  was  suggested  by  that  pretty  church, 
Notre  Dame  de  Lorette,  in  whose  neighborhood,  in 
the  beau  quartier  of  the  city,  this  fraction  of  urban 
[27] 


Great  Piano   Virtuosos 

society  was  wont  to  dwell.  At  that  time  Thiers 
lived  in  the  parish  of  the  church  of  Notre  Dame  de 
Lorette,  Place  St. -George,  in  the  pleasant  hotel  of 
his  mother-in-law,  Madame  Deaune,  with  a  small 
garden  next  the  street.  He  was,  from  time  to  time, 
minister  to  King  Louis  Philippe — which  did  not 
amount  to  much,  and  never  lasted  long.  Thiers  cer- 
tainly did  not  then  believe  that  a  Revolution  would 
find  it  worth  while  to  raze  his  house  to  the  ground, 
or  that  he,  the  little  Advocate  from  Marseilles,  was 
destined  to  rise  on  the  rmns^  as  President  of  the 
French  Republic  !  Iinpavidumjerient  ruince ! 
At  that  time — 1842 — George  Sand  was  an  estab- 
lished fact.  The  whole  range  of  Camelia  literature 
was  in  full  bloom;  Balzac  thought  that  Paris 
breathed  an  electric  atmosphere ;  Paris  was  a  milieu^ 
in  which  alone  one  could  live. 

In  this  milieu  lived  Chopin.  Just  now,  however — in 
the  month  of  August — he  was  still  in  Touraine  with 
George  Sand,  living  in  a  chateau  of  too  diminutive 
proportions  to  be  designated  as  a  "  castle.''  In  truth, 
the  spirit  of  this  time,  and  of  the  Pleiades  of  Art 
and  Literature  which  it  produced,  was  manifested 
in  wishing  to  appear  greater  than  one  wa,s^  and  to 
spend  what  one  did  not  have  at  all  !  The  term  "  dis- 
[28] 


Chopin 


tinguished""*  (le  disüii^ie)  took  the  lead,  and  went 
through  the  most  kaleidoscopic  gradations.  To  re- 
turn to  Paris  before  the  month  of  November; 
above  all,  if  one  shut  one's  self  up  in  Paris  through 
the  summer,  was  not  "distinguished"" !  And  Chopin 
was  very  distinguished — not  like  dead-and-gone 
Kalkbrenner,  as  a  peacock,  or  a  silver  pheasant 
(neither  was  he  decorated  with  the  smallest  Legion 
of  Honor  ribbon),  but  as  a  great  artist^  although 
a  good,  fashionable  Parisian,  was  Chopin  distin- 
guished. In  his  easy,  well-bred  reserve,  in  his  man- 
ners, in  his  whole  outward  appearance,  he  sought 
to  be,  and  was,  distinguished. 

This  time  I  came  from  St.  Petersburg  to  Paris, 
not  from  Riga,  by  way  of  Geneva.  Since  the  Aflat 
major  Weber  Sonata,  I  had  passed  fourteen  years 
in  St.  Petersburg,  quantum  mutatus  ah  illo!  Liszt 
was  in  Paris,  fresh  from  his  unexampled  St.  Peters- 
burg triumph,  where  he — before  four  thousand  peo- 
ple, alone,  and  without  accompaniment — appeared 
in  the  Hall  of  the  Nobility ;  w  here  women  of  the 
highest  rank  awaited  him  on  the  steps  of  his  hotel, 
with  garlands  of  flowers ;  where  the  greatest  nobles 
secured  a  steamboat,  with  choruses  of  singers,  in 
order  fittingly  to  accompany  the  great  artist  as  far 
[29] 


Great  Piano  Virtuosos 

as  Kronstadt,  and  further — to  the  roadstead  of 
the  Gulf  of  Finland,  when  he  sailed  for  Germany. 
My  first  visit  in  Paris  was  to  Liszt,  who  lived  in 
Rue  Blanche,  not  far  from  our  Rue  Montholon  of 
1828.  The  mother  of  the  great  artist  again  received 
me  most  kindly,  but  she  did  not  tell  me,  as  for- 
merly, that  I  "wearied  her  Franz,"  he  was  always 
"in  a  dreadful  way"  after  I,  with  my  Weber  So- 
natas, had  been  to  see  him  !  Her  son  did  not  attend 
church  so  assiduously,  he  carried  his  church  about 
in  himself,  and  no  longer  desired  to  become  a  St. 
Simonist. 

Liszt  himself  received  me  right  royally.  His  first 
words  were:  "I  shall  go  to  see  you  every  day; 
you  live  so  conveniently  near  Schlesinger,  where  I 
go  so  often ;  I  shall  send  you  an  Erard  grand,  and, 
at  the  instrument,  we  will  live  over  again  the  good 
old  times,  especially  the  Weber  Sonatas;  I  sup- 
pose you  have  them  with  you?" 
"In  the  same  copy,  with  your  notes,  which  I  keep 
as  a  holy  relic — but  I  should  like  some  Chopin." 
"We  will  study  whatever  you  like,  only  don't  dare 
imagine  that  you  are  to  pay  me — for  no  price  would 
I  give  lessons.  I  shall  visit  a  friend ;  all  I  ask  is  a 
cup  of  coffee  from  the  hotel.  I  will  come  every  day 
[30] 


Cho 


in 


promptly  at  two  o'clock,  and  we  will  agree  upon 
afternoon  and  evening,  as  you  must  spend  the  en- 
tire morning  at  the  piano — I  shall  send  you  the 
very  best,  I  shall  go  myself  to  Erard's  and  select 
one." 

Those  were  afternoons  never  to  be  forgotten  !  Liszt 
seldom  missed  the  hour — another  mark  of  his  un- 
failing politeness.  I  see  him  standing  in  the  door- 
way of  my  hotel,  his  hat  on  his  head,  an  elegant 
Verdier  stick  in  his  hand,  his  spiritual,  speaking 
countenance  laughing  up  at  me  !  It  made  me  feel 
as  though  /  had  been  made  king  in  Paris  ! 
Once  I  played  his  own  arrangement  of  Schubert's 
Ständchen  to  him. 

"Give  me  a  pencil,"  said  he,  and  wrote  in  it :  Comme 
ncUuraliste,  parfait,  with  Franz  Liszt,  in  his  crooked 
signature. 

"How  naturallste  f^  I  objected,  "when  I  have  had 
you  for  a  teacher  .P" 

"Well ;  you  play  it  very  well ;  heartily,  very  heart- 
ily, and  quite  faultlessly,  but  not  like  a  virtuoso ; 
and  only  such  an  one — and  how  few  among  them 
— can  play  the  Coda  as  I  wish ;  it  is  diablement 
hard,  not  in  the  reading,  but  as  a  whole,  and  in 
virtuoso-like  expression.  That  is  what  I  mean." 
[31] 


Great   Piano   Virtuosos 

We  next  came  to  Weber's  Polacca  in  E  major. 
"There  is  more  virtuoso  work,""  said  he ;  "you  play 
it  very  well,  but  you  have  not  sufficient  strength, 
one  must  be  possessed  of  a  devil  to  play  that.'"* 
I  played  the  Moonlight  Trio. 

"You  play  that  well,''''  said  Liszt,  animatedly,  "look 
you,  that  is  perfect — give  me  the  pencil  ;""*  and  he 
wrote  in  it:  Ceci  est  parfait — "do  you  see,  this 
is  the  antidote  for  the  Schubert  !  Where  did  you 
learn  that  fingering?  that  change  from  the  thumb 
to  the  second  finger,  and  back  again  [in  the  dotted 
middle  part  on  b  and  ^]?  That  is  not  your  own 
invention;  it  is  good,  but  somewhat  choppy,  one 
might  come  to  a  standstill — whose  is  that  finger- 
ing?" 

"It  is  by  Moscheles  in  London ;  in  the  time  after 
you— 1829  !'' 

"Oh  !  ho  !  was  he  so  learned  in  Weber?  Now,  /  will 
play  the  Polacca  to  you,  it  will  be  better."" 
I  always  went  as  far  as  the  court-yard  with  him, 
and  as  he  went  down  the  winding  stairs  he  re- 
peated several  times:  "That  Trio  was  capital  — 
capital !  You  had  not  practised  it,  had  you  ?  It  is 
very  difficult  in  this  cantilena;  one  does  not  get 
that  from  one"'s  so-called  strong  pupils — here  in 
[32] 


Chopin 


Paris,  never.  So,  keep  to  Weber,  there  is  your  na- 
tive soil  !'" 

Then  I  was  happy,  and  began  to  consider  myself  a 
foudre  de  giierre  at  the  piano  !  How  happy  conceit 
can  make  one  !  Those  were  blessed  days,  those  days 
of  the  Weber  alliance  with  Liszt  ! 
Since  then  Liszt  has  been  happily  inspired  to  unite 
the  serious,  striking  Introduction  of  Weber^s  first 
(insignificant)  Polacca  in  E  flat  to  the  second  Fo- 
lacca  in  E,  that  noble  ancestress  of  the  species, — 
to  anfange  the  whole  for  piano  and  orchestra,  and 
so  to  honor  the  bravura  repertory  with  an  inesti- 
mable gift.  The  connecting  paii:  between  the  Weber 
Introduction  and  the  Weber  Polacca,  composed  by 
Liszt,  is  the  most  tasteful  and  intelligent  piece  of 
work  one  can  imagine ;  it  is  like  a  beautiful  face 
whose  expression  reveals  the  soul  of  romance  !  It 
is  like  the  enchanted  wood  of  Titania  in  the 
midst  of  other  forests  !  It  is  inimitably  conceived ! 
Chopin  would  have  wept  over  it !  He  never  soared 
so  high  !  He  never  rose  to  the  romantic,  he  re- 
mained poetically  material.  He  sat,  a  prisoner  in 
the  glitter  of  the  conventional  atmosphere  of  Paris, 
in  its  most  becoming  toilette  of  conventional 
tenets ! 

[33] 


Great  Piano  Virtuosos 

One  morning  Liszt  said :  "It  is  fine  weather,  let 
us  go  for  a  walk — but,  what  have  you  there  for  a 
great-coat  ?'"* 

"A  sort  of  tigerskin  of  brown  velvet;  I  got  it  in 
Hamburg ;  it  fits  snug,  and  suits  me." 
"That  will  make  you  conspicuous  in  Paris  !  /  am 
the  only  man  in  Paris  who  can  afford  to  give  you 
his  arm,  while  you  wear  that  Hanseatic  pelt ;  come 
on.  We  will  get  some  macaroni  at  Broschi's,  oppo- 
site the  Grand  Opera:  Rossini  goes  there — we  will 
sit  at  his  table."" 

As  we  walked  along  the  Boulevards,  and  I  noticed 
how  curiously  the  people  looked  after  us,  I  under- 
stood Liszt's  remark — that  he  alone  might  dare  to 
show  himself  with  any  one  wearing  such  a  garment. 
Chopin  would  never  have  done  it,  it  might  have 
displeased  the  Sand  !  So  strange,  so  affected,  so 
small  was — and  ever  will  be — the  great  city  of 
Paris ! 

The  Weber  A  flat  major  Sonata  came  post  tot  er- 
rores^  in  its  turn.  "Very  good,  very  good,'"  said 
Liszt,    to   the   Rondo   among   other   things — "but 

still  too  little  of  the  little  Countess  B in  St. 

Petersburg:    the    eloquent    foot    is   wanting."'    He 

played  the  foot.  I  studied,  and  went  through  the 

[  34  ] 


Chopin 

Rondo  again  under  his  hawk-eyes.  "Now  it  is 
right,"'  said  he,  "the  foot  is  there,  but  where  is 
the  shoe  ?"  He  played  the  shoe.  Thus  he  always 
had  to  say  and  do  something,  and  he  was  always 
right.  It  was  the  passage  in  the  Rondo  (twenty- 
fourth  and  following  measures)  with  the  serpentine 
scales  in  the  bass  in  F  minor.  Liszt  forgot  it  long 
ago,  in  Rome.  I  shall  remember  it. 
In  Chopin's  Bßat  major  and  A  minor  Mazurkas, 
Op.  7,  I  learned  much  about  piano-playing  in  gene- 
ral from  Liszt.  In  both  pieces  he  noted  important  \^ 
little  variants,  taking  the  matter  very  seriously,  es-  ^^^ 
pecially  the  apparently  so  easy  bass  in  the  Maggiore 
of  the  A  minor  Mazurka.  What  pains  he  took  with 
me  there  !  "Only  an  ass  could  think  that  was  easy,^ 
said  he;  "in  these  slurrings  one  recognizes  the  vir- 
tuoso !  Play  it  thus  to  Chopin,  and  he  will  notice 
something ;  it  will  please  him.  These  stupid  French 
editions  bungle  everything  of  his ;  these  slurs  must 
run  so  in  the  bass  ! "" 

"If  you  play  that  so  to  him  he  will  give  you  lessons, 
only  you  must  summon  the  courage  to  do  it,""  con- 
cluded Liszt. 

It  was  already  October,  and  Chopin  still  so  distingue 

that  he  was  not  in  Paris.  With  the  most  amiable 

[35] 


Great   Piano   Virtuosos 

sympathy  Liszt  said  to  me  one  morning:  "Now  he 
is  coming,  I  feel  sure  of  it,  if  the  Sand  will  only 
let  him  go  i"*"*  I  said :  "If  he  would  only  let  Indiana 

gor 

"That  he  will  not  do,"  Liszt  replied,  "I  know  that. 
When  he  is  here,  I  will  bring  him  directly  to  you ; 
after  all,  ^ou  have  the  Erard ;  and  we  shall  play,  as 
if  by  chance,  the  Onslow  four-hand  Sonata  in  F 
minor  that  you  are  so  fond  of;  we  have  already 
played  it  once  in  Paris — in  public;  curiously  enough 
Chopin  played  the  primo, — that  was  my  idea,  and 
he'll  be  glad  to  do  it  again.  You  must  have  the 
Sonata ;  get  it  at  Schlesinger's,  and  try  to  secure  the 
Leipzig  edition — that  is  correct.  In  this  way  you 
will  most  easily  get  lessons  from  him,  it  will  arrange 
itself — particularly  now,  in  the  beginning  of  the 
season.  You  can't  imagine  how  difficult  it  is,  because 
you  don't  know  Paris  yet.  With  me,  for  example, 
it  is  nothing,  but  hard,  so  hard  with  Chopin  !  How 
many  have  journeyed  all  the  way  to  Paris,  and  have 
not  been  able  even  to  get  a  glimpse  of  him  !" 
From  the  time  I  dared  hope  to  hear  Liszt  and 
Chopin  play  in  my  apartments,  I  walked  on  air  in 
Paris ;  I  was  greeted  in  front  of  the  music-shops ; 
they  offered  me  a  chair  every  time  I  went  into 
[36] 


Cho 


in 


Schlesinger's — I  had  passed  there  with  Liszt !  At 
Schlesinger's  I  met  Berlioz ;  he  understood  little  of 
piano-music,  and  looked — in  his  blue  frock-coat 
with  brass  buttons,  and  decorated  with  the  well- 
earned  Legion  of  Honor — like  a  musical  Robert 
Macaire ;  a  character  whom  Frederic  Lemaitre  suc- 
cessfully exhibited  at  the  Theatre  of  the  Porte  St- 
Martin.  Berlioz  called  Liszt  le  eher  sublime,  which 
was  considered  very  spirituel — people,  in  those 
times,  were  regularly  astonished  if  any  one  dared 
to  clamber  over  the  hedge  of  speech. 
When  I  again  met  Berlioz,  in  St.  Petersburg  in 
1868,  after  the  loss  of  his  only  son,  his  hope  and 
his  joy,  he  looked  like  the  Vicar  of  Wakefield  at  a 
funeral ;  it  was  no  use,  then,  to  speak  to  him  of 
Liszt;  he  had  come  to  consider  the  Bflat  major 
Symphony  of  Beethoven  the  most  beautiful  of  all ! 
There  lay  the  poor,  suffering  man  (always  on  his 
back)  in  the  palace  of  the  Grand-duchess  Helena, 
where  he  lived.  There,  at  his  bedside,  I  read  to  him 
my  report  of  the  concert  directed  by  him,  and 
given,  under  the  patronage  of  the  Grand-duchess, 
by  the  Russian  Musical  Society ;  and  there  he  gave 
me,  at  parting,  his  daguerreotype  with  this  inscrip- 
tion in  his  own  hand :  A  Vhomme  qui  a  su  aimer  et 
[37] 


Great  Piano   Virtuosos 

admirer!!  Son  frere  devoue.  Hector  Berlioz.  Berlioz 
was  unhappier  than  King  Lear  ! 
October  was  here,  but  still  no  Chopin  !  With  trou- 
ble and  some  sacrifices,  I  obtained  an  extension  of 
my  leave  of  absence  from  St.  Petersburg,  waited 
patiently,  and  was  as  diligent  as  possible  at  my 
Erard.  I  well  remember  how,  in  that  cabriolet 
which  I  mounted  at  the  risk  of  my  neck,  in  order 
to  traverse  the  famous  milieu  "with  the  electrical 
atmosphere  ""^  in  all  directions,  and  learn  it  tho- 
roughly, I  used  continually  to  practise — on  the 
wooden  apron  enclosing  the  seat — the  volate  that 
Liszt  had  noted  for  me  in  the  Chopin  Bßat  major 
Mazurka — so  as  to  "keep  my  right  hand  in."  The 
particular  point  was  this, — instead  of  returning  to 
the  theme,  from  J'  to  J'  (an  octave  lower),  to  go 
two  octaves  higher,  and  then  fall  back  into  the 
lower  octave, — that  is,  to  take  twelve  f^s  in  trip- 
lets, and  by  no  chance  to  miss  coming  in  on 
time!  Under  Liszt's  hands,  this  was  a  rocket  with 
its  returning  shower  of  stars,  in  the  reprise  of  the 
theme  ! 

I  mention  this  in  order  to  warn  adepts  never  to 

presume  to  attempt  anything  like  it.  These  naive 

mistakes  always  mislead,  and   make  one  appear  as 

[38] 


Chopin 

ridiculous  as  is  a  German  who  tries  to  speak  French 
— to  quote  Goethe. 

One  evening  Liszt  came  to  see  me  with  the  excel- 
lent pianist,  Hiller,  and  the  well-known  violin-vir- 
tuoso, Ernst.  The  good  piano  was  at  mi/  lodgings, 
and  plenty  of  music  at  hand.  Liszt  played  with 
Hiller  the  overture  to  Der  Freischütz,  and  Ernst 
fiddled  with  them  with  might  and  main.  The  idea 
had  come  into  these  gentlemen''s  heads  that  noon, 
and  Ernst  had  brought  his  violin  along.  It  was  a 
remarkable  performance.  They  remained  for  the 
evening,  and  "made  jokes  of  all  kinds,"'  as  Liszt 
expressed  it.  "Where  does  Cramer  live?''  I  asked. 
"He  has  founded  a  Lancaster  Pianoforte  School,"" 
replied  Liszt ;  "you  cannot  see  him,  he  is  never  in 
the  city — he  lives  in  the  suburb  of  Batignolles  !" 
Cramer,  who  had  become  a  millionaire  in  London, 
speculated  through  a  banker,  and  lost  everj'thing. 
He  became  an  Englishman  in  England,  and  had 
now  come  to  Paris,  which  did  not  suit  him.  "Cramer 
is  a  septuagenarian,  leave  him  alone,"  concluded 
Liszt;  "from  him  you  can  learn  nothing,  since  you 
have  771^."" 

I  did  not  leave  Cramer  alone ;  to  me  he  was  sancti- 
fied, venerahilis  Beda !  I  had  heard  him  at  a  concert 
[39] 


Great   Piano  Virtuosos 

at  the  Argyle  Rooms,  in  London,  in  1829  ;  he  played 
capitally — the  Piano-quartet  in  Eflat  by  ^Mozart 
— with  Lindley,  the  English  violoncellist;  and  Franz 
Cramer,  brother  of  Jean  Baptiste,  played  the  violin. 
In  memory  of  this,  I  wrote  Cramer  a  respectful 
note ;  Count  Wielhorsky  had  met  him  in  Rome,  and 
had  told  me  much  about  him.  That  was  the  con- 
necting-link. The  author  of  the  world-renowned 
Audes — that  hymn-book  of  unconfirmed  pianists — 
Church-Father  Cramer,  answered  me,  and  promised 
to  come.  "Now,"  I  said  to  myself,  "order  an  Eng- 
lish dinner — all  the  dishes  served  at  one  time,  the 
best  port  wine,  and  all  his  works  upon  the  table  !"" 
His  complete  works,  a  huge  pile  of  music  sent  from 
Schlesinger's,  must  have  been  covered  with  a  layer 
of  dust  a  finger  thick — but  they  were  in  good 
condition.  They  contained  the  history  of  a  whole 
human  life  ! 

I  drove  about  an  entire  day  in  order  to  procure  a 
first-class  English  meal  and  port  wine.  Such  a  sin- 
gular place  is  Paris ;  conscious  only  of  itself. 
Unfortunately  Liszt  had  already  left  Paris.  He 
would  not  have  refused  to  play  Church-Father 
Cramer  from  the  pile  !  That  would  have  been  an 
event,  indeed  ! 

[40] 


Chopin 

Cramer  appeared  on  the  stroke  of  seven — he  had 
wntten  me  that  he  would  not  be  out  of  school  any 
earher  !  I  could  hardly  believe  my  eyes  !  From  my 
youth  up,  Cramer  had  stood  in  a  holy  shrine  at 
Riga,  and  here  he  stood  bodily  before  me  !  I  kissed 
his  hand  heartily.  He  was  embarrassed,  but  it  had 
seemed  to  me  the  proper  thing  to  do.  "I  have  but 
this  to  offer  you,"  said  I,  and  led  him  to  the  tower 
of  his  assembled  works. 

"Are  all  those  mine  ?^^  he  sighed ;  "have  I  written 
all  that  ?  ^Mio  is  acquainted  with  it  now  ?  But  I 
am  glad,  I  am  very  glad" — he  shook  my  hand  in 
English  fashion.  We  spoke  French  ;  English  seemed 
out  of  place  to  me,  unless  Cramer  had  begun  ;  and 
German  is  not  a  language  fitted  to  Paris ;  Parisian 
penetrates  into  eveiy  nook  and  cranny  of  life, 
there  ! 

Dinner  was  served.  Everything  English^  even  plates 
and  glasses  ;  he  noticed  it  at  once.  "Do  you  live  in 
English  fashion  ?"  he  demanded.  "It  is  a  little  at- 
tention to  vou  !"  I  replied.  That  seemed  to  please 
him.  "There  was  a  time  when  I  drank  such  wine," 
said  he,  as  he  tasted  the  port,  "but  where  did  you 
find  it  here  ?  Aux  Trois  Tetes  de  Mores,  that  is 
said  to  be  the  only  place  where  one  can  find  good 
[41  ] 


Great  Piano   Virtuosos 

porto,  in  Paris.  Some  one  told  me  of  it,  it  is  an 
American  firm — strange  city,  this  Paris,  is  it  not  ? 
I  do  not  like  it,  I  should  have  done  better,  had  I 
gone  to  Germany,  but  the  climate  here  agrees  with 
me ;  I  have  already  been  here  some  years,  and  am 
too  old  now  to  go  further." 

Cramer  was  sparing  of  words  and  answered  always 
quietly  and  deliberately — moderato.  When  I  asked 
him  about  Chopin,  he  said :  "I  do  not  understand 
him,  but  he  plays  beautifully  and  correctly,  oh  !  very 
correctly ;  he  does  not  allow  himself  to  become 
careless,  like  other  young  people,  but  I  do  not 
understand  him ;  Liszt  is  a  phenomenon,  neither 
does  he  always  play  his  own  compositions.  I  do  not 
understand  this  modern  music." 
The  atmosphere  at  table  was  depressing — why.'' 
Cramer  seemed  to  me  to  cling  too  closely  to  the 
past,  for  the  present  to  have  any  interest  for  him. 
I,  sitting  opposite  to  him,  seemed  so  insignificant 
and  young — with  my  thirty-three  years  !  After  din- 
ner, however,  Cramer  became  more  talkative;  I 
made  a  diversion  with  the  Erard,  and  asked  him  to 
allow  me  to  play  to  him  his  first  three  studies.  He 
sat  down  by  me,  in  the  friendliest  manner — and  so 
I  took,  de  Jacto,  lessons  of  J.  B.  Cramer ! 
[42] 


Chopin 

I  should  never  have  allowed  myself  to  dream  of 
such  a  thing  in  my  young  days !  Vehrstaedt  of 
Geneva  plaved  the  Etudes  as  repertory-music ;  with 
him  I  had  studied  the  third  in  D  major,  with  the 
intricate  fingering,  all  carefully  slurred,  with  a  full 
cantilena,  as  a  prayer,  as  a  slumber-song — what  you 
will.  Cramer  said :  "From  me  you  have  nothing  to 
learn.  Those  are  exercises ;  do  you  play  such  things 
for  pleasure  ?'' 

"Indeed  I  do  !""  I  opened  the  Etude  in  F  with  the 
triplet-figure  in  eighth-notes.  "See  here!  What  a 
pastoral  !'^  I  spoke  of  Henselt  in  St.  Petersburg, 
who  played  the  Etude  so  wonderfully.  It  seemed  to 
please  him. 

At  my  request,  Cramer  played  the  first  three 
Etudes.  It  was  dr}',  wooden,  harsh ;  with  no  canti- 
lena in  the  third  one,  in  D  major,  but  rounded  and 
masterly.  The  impression  I  received  was  painful, 
extremely  painful !  Was  that  Cramer  ?  Had  the  great 
man  lived  so  long,  only  to  remain  so  far  behind  the 
times  .^  I  did  my  best  to  prevent  the  appearance  of 
any  sign  of  my  disillusion ;  I  had,  however,  entirely 
lost  my  bearings,  and  did  not  know  what  to  say  ! 
I  asked  him  if  he  did  not  think  an  absolutes  Ligato 
indicated  in  this  third  Etude?  He  had  cut  short 
[43] 


Great  Piano  Virtuosos 

off  the  notes  in  the  upper  part,  and  had  paid  no 
attention  whatever  to  binding  the  notes  in  the  bass 
—  I  could  not  beHeve  my  eyes  and  ears  ! 
"We  were  not  so  particular,"  answered  Cramer; 
"we  did  not  consider  that  of  great  importance, 
these  are  only  studies :  I  have  not  your  modern  ac- 
cents and  intentions.  Clementi  played  his  Gradiis 
ad  Parnassum  just  so — it  was  good  enough  fof  us, 
and  no  one  has  ever  sung  more  beautifully  on  the 
piano  than  Field,  who  was  a  pupil  of  Clementi.  My 
pattern  was  Mozart,  no  one  has  ever  composed 
better  than  he  !  Now  I  am  forgotten ;  I'm  a  poor 
teacher  of  the  rudiments  in  a  suburb  of  Paris,  where 
they  study  the  Bertini  Etudes,  I  must  even  teach 
Bertini  myself !  You  can  hear  it  any  time  you  will 
— eight  pianos  going  at  once  V 
I  spoke  of  Hummel,  who  dedicated  to  Cramer  his 
Pianoforte  Trio  in  E  major ;  I  said  I  thought  the 
theme  of  the  first  part  fine,  but  nothing  comes  of 
it,  except  smooth  passages. 

"Next  to  Mozart,  Hummel  is  the  greatest  composer 
for  piano,"  said  Cramer,  "no  one  has  surpassed  him." 
I  knew  that  Cramer  could  not  endure  Beethoven, 
much  less  Weber :  I  had  removed  all  my  music,  so 
that  nothing  remained  in  the  room  save  only  J.  B. 
[  44  ] 


Chopin 

Cramer.  I  drew  forth  his  four-hand  Sonata  in  G 
major  (with  the  Adagio  in  C).  I  had  loved  to  play 
it  with  my  Hfe-long  friend  Dinglestaedt,  in  the 
happy  days  of  my  youth  !  Cramer  wondered  that  I 
should  know  it — he  had  to  look  it  over  again,  him- 
self, then  played  the  bass  clumsily  and  roughly,  so 
that  all  that  remained  to  me  was  the  honor  of  hav- 
ing' sat  next  the  composer  !  I  had  never,  but  once, 
in  my  life,  experienced  so  great  a  disenchantment 
with  so  famous  an  artist :  Beethoven's  pupil,  Ferdi- 
nand Ries,  whom  I  heard  in  Frankfort-on-Main,  in 
the  summer  of  1827 ;  he  was  a  woodchopper  at  the 
piano. 

Cramer  had  a  thick-set  figure,  a  full,  ruddy  coun- 
tenance, and  dark  brown  eyes;  he  had  the  appear- 
ance of  an  Englishman,  and  English  manners. 
Considering  his  old  age,  he  was  extremely  vigorous. 
"I  am  a  good  walker,''  said  he,  "I  walked  all  the 
way  from  Batignolles  to  Paris."^  He  stayed  until 
late  in  the  evening,  selecting  one  and  another  of  his 
oldest  compositions,  and  playing  parts  of  them. 
"  I  don't  remember  that !  I  don't  know  this  any 
more,"  were  his  words.  I  listened  with  the  greatest 
reverence^  but  I  could  not  be  reconciled  to  his 
treatment  of  the  piano.  It  was  repulsive.  On  tak- 
[45] 


Great   Piano  Virtuosos 

ing  leave,  he  said :  "  Receive  the  blessing  of  an 
old  man ;  I  owe  you  an  evening  such  as  I  had 
never  hoped  to  enjoy  again.  I  wish  sincerely  that 
it  may  bring  you  happiness.  And  so  you  say,  I  am 
not  quite  forgotten  ?  "*"* 

"The  great  virtuoso  Henselt  plays  your  Etudes  as 
repertory -mw^Xc,  in  St.  Petersburg;  in  my  native 
city,  Riga,  the  Etudes  lie  upon  every  piano — they 
will  never  perish ;  they  alone  rank  with  The  Well- 
tempered  Clavichord  as  a  Book  of  Wisdom ;  they 
have  never  been  equalled,  and,  like  Bach's  work, 
can  never  be  laid  aside  ! "" 

I  spoke  from  my  heart.  That  Cramer  had  visited 
me,  I  could,  and  can  still,  scarcely  believe. 
The  worthy  man  died  a  few  years  after,  in  pov- 
erty, and  forgotten  by  all !  That  would  never  have 
been  the  case  had  he  lived  in  Germany  !  Cramer  is 
a  poet  in  his  Etudes. 

In  the  meantime,  Meyerbeer  had  come  to  Paris, 
and  was  at  work  on  his  new  opera,  the  name  of 
which  he  refused  to  divulge.  It  was  VAJricaine.  His 
arrival  was  an  event  in  Paris. 

Liszt  had   left  his  visiting-card   with  me,  with  the 

following  words  for  Chopin  wTitten  upon  it :  Lais- 

sez passer,  Franz  Liszt.  "Present  this  at  Chopin's,"" 

[46] 


Chopin 


he  told  me ;  "  you  might  never  succeed  in  seeing 
him  at  all  without  a  lalssez-passer ;  that  is  the 
custom  among  authors  and  artists  of  the  first  rank, 
we  cannot  afford  to  lose  our  time.  About  two 
o'clock,  go  to  the  Cite  d'Orleans,  where  he  lives — 
where,  also,  live  the  Sand,  the  Viardot,  and  Dan- 
tan*" — [the  famous  caricaturist,  who  drew  a  pic- 
ture of  Liszt  playing  the  piano  with  Jour  hands]. 
"  In  the  evening,  these  people  assemble  at  the  house 
of  a  Spanish  countess,  who  is  a  political  refugee.  Per- 
haps Chopin  will  take  you  there ;  but  do  not  ask  him 
to  present  you  to  the  Sand,  he  is  very  mistrustful ! " 
"He  has  not  your  courage,  then.?*" 
"  No,  he  has  not,  pauvre  Frederic !  *" 

At  last  I  could  go  to  Chopin  ! 

The  Cite  d'Orleans  was  a  new  structure  of  large 
proportions,  with  a  spacious  court, — the  first  under- 
taking of  this  description ;  a  collection  of  apart- 
ments, with  numbers,  and  a  name  (Cite),  is  always 
popular  with  Parisians. 

The  Cite  lay  behind  the  Rue  de  Provence,  in  the 
fashionable  quarter  of  Paris.  It  looked  aristocratic 
— and  that  was  and  is  the  end  and  aim  of  every- 
thing there  ! 

[47] 


Great   Piano  Virtuosos 

I  gave  Liszt's  card  to  the  servant  in  the  anteroom  ; 
a  man-servant  is  an  article  of  luxury  in  Paris,  a 
rarissima  avis  in  the  home  of  an  artist. 
The  servant  said  that  M.  Chopin  was  not  in  Paris. 
I  did  not  allow  myself  to  be  put  out,  and  repeated : 
"  Deliver  this  card,  I  will  attend  to  the  rest."'  Chopin 
soon  came  out  to  me,  the  card  in  his  hand ;  a  young 
man,  of  middle  height,  slim,  haggard,  with  a  sad, 
though  very  expressive  countenance,  and  elegant 
Parisian  bearing — stood  before  me.  I  have  seldom, 
if  ever,  met  with  an  apparition  so  entirely  enga- 
ging. He  did  not  press  me  to  sit  down ;  I  stood 
before  him  as  before  a  monarch.  —  "What  do  you 
wish  ?  Are  you  a  pupil  of  Liszt,  an  artist  ? "'"'  "  A 
friend  of  Liszt.  I  wish  to  have  the  privilege  of 
studying  with  you  your  Mazurkas,  which  I  regard 
as  a  Literature ;  I  have  already  studied  several  of 
them  with  Liszt  "*" — I  felt  that  I  had  been  incau- 
tious, but  it  was  too  late. 

"So .?■'''  said  Chopin,  deliberately,  but  in  his  most 
amiable  tone,  "  why,  then,  do  you  need  me  .'*  Play 
to  me,  please,  those  you  have  played  with  Liszt ;  I 
have  still  a  few  minutes'"* — he  drew  an  elegant 
little  watch  from  his  pocket ;  "  I  was  going  out — 
I  had  forbidden  the  door  to  any  one,  pardon  me  !  '"* 
[48] 


Chopin 


I  found  myself  in  the  same  painful  position  which  I 
had  experienced  thirteen  years  before,  with  Liszt ; 
another  examination  ?  After  Liszt,  though,  I  felt 
I  need  fear  no  one,  and  I  had  come  from  St. 
Petersburg — I  went  without  further  ado  to  the 
piano,  and  opened  it  as  though  I  were  quite  at 
home.  It  was  a  Pleyel ;  I  had  been  told  that 
Chopin  never  used  any  other  instiTiment.  The 
Pleyel  has  an  easier  action  than  that  of  any  other 
Parisian  manufacture.  I  struck  a  chord  before  seat- 
ing myself,  in  order  to  get  the  depth  of  touch, — 
le  giie,  I  called  it.  This,  and  the  mot,  seemed  to 
please  Chopin ;  he  smiled,  leaned  wearily  against 
the  piano,  and  his  keen  eyes  looked  me  directly  in 
the  face.  I  ventured  only  one  glance  towards  him, 
and  then  boldly  struck  up  the  B flat  major  Ma- 
zurka, the  typical  one,  to  which  Liszt  had  noted 
the  variants  for  me. 

I  got  through  well ;  the  volata  through  the  two 
octaves  went  better  than  ever  before,  the  instru- 
ment ran  even  easier  than  my  Erard. 
Chopin  whispered  engagingly :  "  That  ti'ait  is  not 
your  owTi,  is  it  ?  He  showed  you  that !  He  must 
have  his  hand  in  everything ;  well  !  he  may  dare — 
he  plays  to  thousands,  I  seldom  to  one!  Very  well, 
[49] 


Great  Piano  Virtuosos 

I  will  give  you  lessons — but  only  twice  a  week, 
that  is  the  most  I  ever  give;  it  will  be  difficult 
for  me  to  find  three-quarters  of  an  hour.""  He 
looked  again  at  the  watch.  "What  are  you  read- 
ing? With  what  do  you  occupy  yourself  in  gen- 
eral?'' That  was  a  question  I  was  well  prepared 
to  answer:  "I  prefer  George  Sand,  and  Jean 
Jacques,  to  all  other  writers,"  said  I,  too  quickly 
— he  laughed :  he  was  beautiful  at  that  moment. 
*' Liszt  told  you  to  say  that — I  see,  you  are  ini- 
tiated— so  much  the  better.  Only  be  punctual, 
everything  goes  by  clockwork  with  me,  my  house 
is  like  a  dove-cote  (pigeonnier).  I  see  already  that 
we  shall  be  congenial ;  a  recommendation  from 
Liszt  means  something;  you  are  the  ßrst  pupil 
he  has  recommended  to  me — we  are  friends,  we 
shall  be  comrades." 

I  always  went  to  him  long  before  my  hour,  and 
waited.  One  lady  after  another  came  out,  each 
more  beautiful  than  the  others;  once  it  was  Mile. 
Laure  Duperre,  the  Admiral's  daughter;  Chopin 
always  accompanied  her  to  the  stairs — she  was  a 
most  lovely  woman,  tall  and  straight,  like  a  palm- 
tree.  To  her  Chopin  dedicated  two  of  his  most  im- 
portant Nocturnes  (C  minor  and  F sharp  minor.  Op. 
[50] 


Chopin 

48);  she  was,  at  that  time,  his  favorite  pupil.  In 
the  anteroom  I  often  encountered  Httle  Filtsch, 
who,  unfortunately,  died  young.  He  was  then  but 
thirteen  years  old — a  Hungarian  genius.  He  under- 
stood, he  played  Chopin!  At  a  soiree  at  the  house 
of  the  Duchesse  d'Agoult,  Liszt  said,  of  Filtsch,  in 
my  presence :  "  When  the  little  one  goes  on  the 
road,  I  shall  shut  up  shop."  I  was  jealous  of 
Filtsch,  Chopin  had  eyes  only  for  him.  He  gave 
him  the  Scherzo  in  Bflat  minor  (Op.  31) ;  he  had 
•forbidden  me  to  touch  the  piece,  saying  that  it 
was  too  difficult — he  was  right,  too — but  he  per- 
mitted me  to  stay  when  they  played  it,  so  I  have 
often  heard  this  charming  work  in  its  highest  per- 
fection. Filtsch  also  played  the  E  minor  Concerto; 
Chopin  accompanied  at  a  second  piano,  and  in- 
sisted that  the  little  fellow  played  it  better  than 
himself;  I  did  not  believe  it!  But  such  was  he; 
he  had  little  physical  strength,  but  no  one  could 
approach  him  in  grace  and  elegance,  and  if  he 
embellished,  it  was  always  the  apotheosis  of  good 
taste.  Only  in  his  earlier  years  had  Chopin  given 
concerts,  and  won  a  place  in  Paris  beside  Liszt. 
That  is  saying  much  !  Now  he  played  only  once  a 
year,  semi-publicly,  to  a  select  circle  of  his  pupils 
[51  ] 


Great  Piano   Virtuosos 

and   adherents,   among   the   flower   of   the   highest 
society,    who    took    the    tickets    in    advance,    and 
divided  them  among  themselves,  as  he  told  me. 
"Do  you  practise  on  the  day  of  the  concert?'"  I 
asked  him. 

"It  is  a  temble  time  for  me;  I  do  not  like  pub- 
licity, but  it  is  a  duty  I  owe  my  position.  For  two 
weeks  I  shut  myself  up,  and  play  Bach.  That  is  my 
preparation ;  I  do  not  practise  my  own  composi- 
tions.'' 

Chopin  was  the  Phoenix  of  intimacy  with  the  piano. 
In  his  Nocturnes  and  Mazurkas  he  is  unrivalled, 
downright  fabulous.  His  Mazurkas  were  Heinrich 
Heine's  songs  on  the  piano  !  When  I  told  him  so, 
he  played  abstractedly  with  the  chain  of  his  little 
watch,  which  he  always  kept  on  the  piano  during 
lessons  so  as  not  to  overstep  the  three-quarter  hour, 
which  passed  so  quickly  ! 

"Yes,  you  understand  me,"  said  he.  "I  listen  with 
pleasure,  when  you  play  something  of  mine  for  the 
first  time,  for  then  you  give  me  ideas ;  if  you  pre- 
pare yourself,  it  is  not  at  all  the  same — it  is  then 
mediocre." 

"Liszt  said  the  same  thing  to  me,"  escaped  me. 
"Then  I  do  not  wonder  that  you  agree  with  me," 
[62] 


Chopin 

was  his  piquant  and  piqued  rejoinder.  With  Liszt, 
as  with  Chopin,  one  had  to  be  extremely  cautious, 
for,  in  point  of  sensibility,  they  were  ultra  French. 
"Of  the  Mazurkas,  Liszt  said  one  must  harness  a 
new  pianist  of  the  first  rank  to  each  one  of  them.'"* 
"Liszt  is  always  right,''  answered  Chopin ;  "do  you 
think  that  /  am  satisfied  with  my  own  interpreta- 
tion of  the  Mazurkas.^  A  few  times  I  have  been 
satisfied — in   those   yearly   Concerts,  when   I   have 
been   uplifted   by   the   appreciative   atmosphere    of 
the  hall.  Only  there  must  I  be  heard,  once  in  the 
year — the  rest  of  the  time  is  for  work  !  There  is 
that  Valse  vielancoUqiie — you  will  never  in  your  life 
be  able  to  play  it,  but  because  you  understand  the 
piece,  I  will  write  something  in  it  for  you.'"^ 
Chopin's  autographs  are  rare ;  he  wrote  no  letters, 
no  notes :   "  George   Sand,"   he  was  heard   to   say, 
"writes  so  beautifully,   that   no   one   else   has  any 
need  to  write  !''   He  went  as  far  as  that!  that  was 
his  way  !  How  prone  is  Genius   to  be  deluded  by 
woman  !  How  far  higher  Chopin  stood  !  Chopin  will 
be  played  when  not  a  line  by  George  Sand  will  be 
read.  What  has  this  woman,  so  overrated  in  France, 
ever  ^vritten,  of  an  imperishable  nature?  But  Cho- 
pin's Pindaric   Hymns   of  Victory,   the   Polacca  in 
[53] 


Great   Piano   Virtuosos 

A  flat  major  (to  mention  this  alone),  are  immortal ; 
they  will  always  belong  to  the  best  literature  of  the 
piano,  but  the  works  of  Sand  picture  the  decline  of 
morals,  and  thus  are  the  reverse  of  good  literature. 
Chopin  was  dazzled,  prepossessed  from  the  first  for 
the  poisonous  plant,  perhaps  because  but  one  side 
of  his  literary  taste  had  been  cultivated,  not  all 
sides,  as  was  the  case  with  Liszt.  It  is  often  so, 
and  the  English  judge  was  right,  who  in  every 
criminal  case  put  the  question :  "Where  is  the 
woman  ?  I  don't  see  the  woman  !" 
I  managed  with  Chopin  as  one  would  with  a  woman, 
whom  one  wished,  above  all  things,  to  please.  With 
Liszt  /  did  not  manage  at  all,  he  managed  me^  and 
just  exactly  as  he  pleased.  Chopin  said  to  me,  in 
one  of  his  confidential  moods :  "I  have  but  one 
fault  to  find  with  you ;  that  you  are  a  Russian  !^ 
Liszt  would  never  have  said  that ;  it  was  one-sided, 
narrow — but  it  was  a  key  to  his  nature.  He  often 
made  indirect  excuses  to  me ;  once  he  said  :  "Yes, 
when  one  understands  Beethoven  and  Weber  so; 
— no  Frenchman  ever  can  !" 

When  I  asked  him  if  we  might  not  go  to  see  Du- 
perre,  he  answered :  "Ah — she  pleased  you  !  I    in- 
troduce no  one  !  You  have  nothing  to  learn  from 
[54] 


Chopin 

her,  you  play  my  things  in  Weber  style,  and  have 
learned  something  from  Liszt.""  Liszt  would  not 
have  answered  so,  he  would  have  said:  "When  do 
you  wish  to  go  ?"  To  be  sure  Chopin  added,  by  way 
of  excuse:  "In  a  few  days  I  must  play  the  A  flat 
major  Sonata  of  Beethoven  (Op.  26)  to  some  Rus- 
sian ladies ;  I  promised  to  do  so.  I  pray  you,  come 
with  me,  it  will  be  pleasant  for  me  to  have  you.  The 
ladies  will  send  their  carriage  for  me,  and  we  shall 
drive  en  princes.'''' 

Can'iages  played  an  important  part  in  the  life  of 
this  strange  city — even  in  this  circle  ! 
The  Russian  ladies  were  the  ideally  beautiful  Baron- 
ess Krlidner,  and  her  charming  friend,  the  Countess 
Scheremetjew ;  I  had  been  well  known  to  them  in 
St.  Petersburg ;  they  never  failed  to  be  present  at 
the  Sunday  matinees  at  Henselt's,  and  at  all  other 
musicales  at  the  home  of  Count  Wielhorski. 
As  we  drove  along  the  Boulevards,  I  spoke  to  Cho- 
pin of  Henselt.  ''He  would  be  glad  to  hear  you  !" 
"/  no  less  glad  to  hear  him  !"  answered  Chopin, 
heartily.  "Will  he  not  come  here  sometime.?'"  One 
must  always  come — the  Parisians  never  went! 
The  Baroness**  talented  daughter  was  a  pupil  of 
Chopin's,  also  the  young  Princess  Tchernischow, 
[55] 


Great  Piano  Virtuosos 

daughter  of  the  Russian  Minister  of  War.  Chopin 
dedicated  his  Prelude  in  C  sharp  minor,  Op.  45,  to 
her. 

As  we  rolled  over  the  Boulevards  in  the  luxurious 
interior  of  a  St.  Petersburg  caleche,  with  liveried 
servants  to  whom  Chopin  called  my  attention,  I 
thought :  "It  will  not  soon  happen  again,  that  the 
first  and  last  letters  of  the  musical  alphabet  will  sit 
side  by  side  in  the  brilliant  sunlight  of  beautiful 
Paris !" 

Chopin  had  been  sent  for,  to  play  the  Beethoven 
Sonata — the  Variation  movement. 
How  did  Chopin  play  Beethoven's  Op.  9ß?  He 
played  it  well,  but  not  so  well  as  his  own  composi- 
tions ;  neatly,  but  with  no  contrasts — not  like  a 
romance,  mounting  from  variation  to  variation. 
His  mezzo  voce  was  a  whisper,  but  he  was  unap- 
proachable in  his  cantilena,  endlessly  finished  in 
coherency  of  construction — ideally  beautiful,  but 
womanish!  Beethoven  is  a  man,  and  never  ceases 
to  be  a  man  !  Chopin  played  on  a  Pleyel — at  one 
time  he  would  never  give  a  lesson  on  any  other  in- 
strument ;  one  had  to  have  a  Pleyel !  Every  one  was 
charmed ;  I,  too,  was  charmed — but  only  by  his  tone, 
by  his  touch,  by  his  elegance  and  grace,  by  his  abso- 
[56] 


Chopin 

lutely  jmre  style.  As  we  drove  back  together,  I  was 
quite  sincere  when  he  asked  my  opinion. 
"/  indicate^''  he  remarked,  without  any  touchiness, — 
"the  listenere  must  finish  the  picture."" 
When  we  returned  to  the  house,  he  went  into  a 
small  cabinet  which  adjoined  the  drawing-room,  to 
change  his  clothes.  I  seated  myself  at  the  Pleyel.  I 
felt  I  owed  Liszt  something,  and  played  the  Beet- 
hoven theme  so  as  to  express  an  autumn  landscape, 
with  a  dash  of  summer  sunlight !  with  the  three 
well-graduated,  very  intensive  Crescendos  in  the 
five  consecutive  A  flats  (sixteenth-note  groups). 
Everything  that  was  in  it,  came  forth,  even  to  a 
sudden  halt  before  the  gruppetto  in  thirty-second 
notes  !  Chopin  came  at  once  from  the  cabinet,  and 
sat  down  near  me,  still  in  his  shirt -sleeves.  I  played 
well,  and  glowed  like  a  coal ;  it  was  a  sort  of  chal- 
lenge, but  not  intentionally  so ;  I  but  spoke  w^ith 
myself.  At  the  Thema,  I  stopped,  and  looked  him 
quietly  in  the  eyes.  He  laid  his  hand  on  my  shoul- 
der, and  said  :  "  I  will  tell  Liszt.  It  never  occurred 
to  me  to  play  it  like  that,  but  it  is  fine.  But  must 
one  always  speak  with  so  much  passion?"' — "It  is 
no  drawing-room  piece,  it  is  the  life  of  a  human 
being,""*  I  replied ;  "  Rochlitz  has  wTitten  a  novel 
[5T] 


Great   Piano   Virtuosos 

about  it ;  and  that  it  must  be  played  with  passion, 
is  signified  in  the  coda  of  the  last  variation,  where 
the  B  flats  are  only  an  accompaniment  to  the  Aspi- 
ration, are  no  longer  dotted,  and  are  played  in  the 
middle.  But  what  do  you  not  do  with  the  groups  of 
triplets  in  the  last  variation  ?  If  I  could  only  learn 
that  of  you  !  But  that  would  be  impossible,  that  is 
a  part  of  your  nature,  and  belongs  to  your  pecu- 
liar management  of  the  instrument !  '^ 
We  talked  much  of  Beethoven,  for  the  first  time. 
He  never  cared  very  much  for  Beethoven ;  he 
only  knew  his  great  compositions,  nothing  at  all 
of  his  last  works.  That  was  in  the  air  of  Paris  ! 
The  Symphonies  were  known  there ;  the  Quartets 
but  little — the  later  ones,  not  at  all.  The  Morin 
Quartet  Society  was  formed  later;  Paris  was  al- 
ways decades  behind  Germany. 
I  told  Chopin,  among  other  things :  In  the  F  minor 
Quartet  Beethoven  had  divined  Mendelssohn,  Schu- 
mann, and  him  [Chopin] ;  the  Scherzo  prepared  one 
for  his  Mazurka  Fantasias;  this  did  not  mean,  in 
the  least,  that  he  had  borrowed  from  Beethoven ; 
Beethoven  embraced  all  within  himself — a  univer- 
sal genius  like  that,  anticipates  future  epochs  in 
this  way.9 

[58] 


Chopin 

"Bring  me  that  Quartet,"*'  said  Chopin,  "I  do  not 
know  it.'"*  I  brought  it.  He  thanked  me  repeatedly. 
I  also  brought  Weber.  He  did  not  appreciate  him ; 
he  spoke  of  "Opera,""  of  "  unklaviermassig""  [bad 
piano-style]  ! — In  general,  Chopin  was  far  from 
comprehending  the  German  spirit  in  music,  though 
I  often  heard  him  say :  "  There  is  but  one  School, 
the  German.''''  The  build  of  his  compositions  is  Ger- 
man, not  French ;  he  bears  Bach  in  mind.  Of  many 
examples,  let  us  consider  the  C  sharp  minor  Ma- 
zurka, Op.  50,  and  the  C  sharp  minor  Mazurka, 
Op.  4 :  they  begin  as  though  written  for  the  or- 
gan, and  end  in  an  exclusive  salon ;  they  are  in 
imitative  style.  They  do  him  much  credit.  They 
are  more  fully  worked  out  than  usual — they  are 
sonnets,  as  were  none  of  the  others  ! — Chopin  was 
much  pleased  when  I  told  him  that,  in  the  con- 
struction of  Mazurka  Op.  50,  the  passage  from 
E  major  to  F  major  was  the  same  as  that  in  the 
Agatha  Aria  of  Robin  des  hois  (compare,  in  the 
C  major  Sonata  of  Weber,  the  Trio  of  the  Menu- 
etto  in  E  major,  eight  measures  before  the  close). 
"I  do  not  know  the  Aria,  though  I  have  heard 
it — show  it  to  me.''  When  I  brought  him  the  Aria 
and  Sonata  he  said :  "  I  did  not  know  that  any- 
[59] 


Great   Piano    Virtuosos 

thing  like  this  had  ever  been  written  ! "'  "  And 
think  how  long  ago  Weber  wrote  them,"''  I  an- 
swered, "the  Sonata  in  1813,  the  Freischütz  in 
1820!" 

I  tormented  Chopin  most,  with  the  famous  Nocturne 
in  E  flat  major.  Op.  9,  dedicated  to  the  lovely  Ca- 
mille  Pleyel.  He,  like  Liszt,  was  very  sensible  to 
the  charms  of  women. 

Deux  coqs  vivaient  en  paix,  une  poule  survint  : 
Et  voilä  la  guerre  allumee. 
Amour!  tu perdis  Troie ! 

The  Nocturne  is  simply  a  perfected  Field,  grafted 
on  a  more  interesting  bass ;  in  1842  it  was  in  the 
full  bloom  of  fashion ;  now  it  is  superseded  by  the 
later,  the  higher  forms  in  Chopin — more  especially 
by  the  Duperre  Nocturnes,  Op.  48  (C  minor  and 
F  sharp  minor). 

When  Chopin  was  pleased  with  a  scholar,  he,  with 
a  small,  well -sharpened  pencil,  made  a  cross  under 
the  composition.  I  had  received  one,  in  the  Noc- 
turne (premier  chevron);  next  time  I  came,  I  got 
another.  I  came  still  another  time.  "Do  please  let 
me  alone,''  said  Chopin,  "I  do  not  like  the  piece  at 
[60] 


Chop 


in 


all  [because  he  had  already  soared  beyond  it];  there, 
you  have  another  cross,  more  than  three  I  riever  give. 
You  cannot  do  it  any  better  V 

"You  play  it  so  beautifully,*''  I  ventured,  "can  no 
one  else?""  "Liszt  can,*"  said  Chopin,  drily,  and  played 
it  to  me  no  more.  He  had  noted  in  it  some  very  im- 
portant little  changes  for  me;  his  notes  were  clean, 
small,  and  sharp,  like  English  diamond  type. 
In  the  Cite  d' Orleans,  where  Chopin  lived,  lived  also 
Dantan,  George  Sand,  and  Pauhne  Viardot.  They 
assembled  in  the  evening,  in  the  same  house,  in  the 
apartment  of  an  old  Spanish  countess,  a  political 
emigree.  All  of  which  Liszt  had  told  me.  Chopin 
took  me  \vith  him  once.  On  the  staii^  he  said:  "You 
must  play  something,  but  nothing  of  mine — play 
your  Weber  piece"  (the  Invitation). 
George  Sand  said  not  a  word  when  Chopin  intro- 
duced me.  That  was  uncivil.  For  that  reason,  I  im- 
mediately sat  do^vTi  close  to  her.  Chopin  hovered 
round  like  a  frightened  bird  in  a  cage,  he  saw  that 
something  was  coming.  Was  there  ever  a  time  when 
he  was  without  apprehension  in  her  presence  ?  At 
the  first  pause  in  the  conversation,  which  was  con- 
ducted by  Sand's  friend,  Madame  Viardot  (I  was  to 
become  well  acquainted  with  this  great  singer,  later, 
[61] 


Great   Piano   Virtuosos 

in  St.  Petersburg),  Chopin  took  me  by  the  arm,  and 
led  me  to  the  piano.  Reader  !  If  you  play  the  piano, 
you  can  picture  to  yourself  how  sorely  I  stood  in 
need  of  courage !  It  was  a  Pleyel  upright,  which,  in 
Paris,  passed  for  a  pianoforte  !  I  played  "The  In- 
vitation" fragmentarily ;  Chopin  shook  me  by  the 
hand ;  George  Sand  did  not  say  a  word.  I  sat  down 
by  her,  again,  and  followed  my  purpose  openly. 
Chopin  regarded  us  apprehensively,  across  the  table, 
on  which  the  inevitable  carcel  was  burning. 
"Will  you  not  come  to  St.  Petersbui'g  sometime .?''' 
said  I,  in  my  politest  manner,  to  George  Sand, 
"where  you  are  read  so  much,  and  so  highly  re- 
spected.'"*  "I  will  never  lower  myself,  by  visiting  a 
country  where  slavery  exists,*"  she  answered  shortly. 
(Je  ne  m'abaisserai  jamais  jusqu'ä  un  pays  d'es- 
claves !) 

This  was  indecent,  after  she  had  been  discourteous. 
"After  all,  you  may  be  right,  not  to  come,""  I  re- 
plied, in  the  same  tone :  "you  might  find  the  door 
closed  against  you  !  I  just  thought  of  Kaiser  Niko- 
laus.'*'' George  Sand  looked  at  me,  astounded ;  I 
looked  steadily  back,  into  her  beautiful,  big,  brown 
cow-eyes.  Chopin  did  not  seem  displeased.  I  under- 
stood every  motion  of  his  head. 
[62] 


Cho 


in 


Instead  of  answering,  George  Sand  rose,  and  strode 
like  a  man  across  the  room  to  the  glowing  fire. 
I  followed  at  her  heels,  and  sat  down,  ready  primed, 
next  her — for  the  third  time. 
She  had  to  say  something,  at  last. 
She  drew  an  enormously  thick  Trabucco  cigar  from 
her  apron-pocket,  and  called  back,  into  the  drawing- 
room  :  ^'Frederic,  unßdibiis  r 

I  felt  insulted  in  him — my  great  lord  and  master;  I 
understood  Liszt's  remark :  Pauvre  Frederic !  in  all 
its  bearings. 

Chopin  obediently  brought  a  fidihus. 
After  the  first  abominable  whifF  of  smoke,  George 
Sand   favored   me  with  a  question :    "I  suppose  I 
could  not  even  smoke  a  cigar  in  a  drawing-room 
in  St.  Petersburg  P"' 

"In  no  drawing-room,  Madame,  have  I  ever  seen  a 
cigar  smoked,'^  I  answered,  not  without  emphasis, 
with  a  bow  ! 

She  looked  at  me  sharply,  the  thi-ust  had  struck 
home  !  I  looked  quietly  around  at  the  fine  pictures 
in  the  salon,  each  one  of  which  was  lighted  up  by 
a  separate  lamp.  Chopin  had  probably  not  over- 
heard us,  he  had  retm-ned  to  the  table,  where  our 
hostess  sat. 

[63] 


Great   Piano   Virtuosos 

Pauvre  Frederic! — how  sorry  I   was  for  him — the 
great  artist ! 

The  next  day,  M.  Armand,  the  portier  of  my  hotel, 
said  to  me :  "A  gentleman  and  lady  have  been  here 
— I  told  them  you  were  not  at  home, — you  did 
not  say  you  wished  to  receive  visitors.  The  gentle- 
man had  no  card,  but  left  his  name/'  I  read :  Chopin 
et  Madame  George  Sand.  I  quarrelled  every  day  for 
two  months,  with  M.  Armand. 
Such  are  the  Parisians ;  one  must  know  beforehand, 
if  one  is  to  have  visitors — and  it  nearly  always  hap- 
pens, that  visitors  come  at  such  inconvenient  times, 
that  one  has  to  be  denied  to  them  ! 
That  truly  would  have  been  an  interesting  visit ! 
Chopin  might  even  have  played  with  me  !  I  should 
have  made  him. 

Chopin  said  to  me,  during  my  lesson :  "George  Sand 
[Mme.  Dudevant  was  always  so  called]  went  with 
me  to  see  you — what  a  pity  you  were  not  at  home  ! 
I  regretted  it  very  much.  She  felt  that  she  had  been 
rude  to  you  !  You  would  have  seen  how  amiable  she 
can  be ;  you  pleased  her  very  much  ! '' 
The  Spanish  countess  probably  had  a  hand  in  that 
visit ;  she  was  a  woman  of  distinction,  and  she  may 
have  reproved  George  Sand  for  her  rudeness  to  me 
[64] 


Cho 


in 


— I  thought.  I  drove  to  call  upon  George  Sand  ; 
she  was  not  in.  I  asked:  "What  is  Madame  pro- 
-3erly  called — Dude  van  t .'''"  "Ah  !  ]\Ionsieur,  she  has 
many  names,"^  was  the  concierge's  answer. 
From  that  time  on,  Chopin  was  particularly  com- 
plaisant to  me.  I  had  pleased  George  Sand!  That 
was  a  diploma.  George  Sand  had  considered  me 
worthy  the  honor  of  a  visit !  That  was  promotion  I 
Liszt  or  Chopin — humanity  is  the  same  everywhere. 
"You  are  approved/'  Liszt  had  said  to  me  a  month 
earlier,  referring  to  a  Parisian  lady  of  the  highest 
rank,  whom  he  had  always  wished  to  please,  and 
had  always  succeeded  in  pleasing!  But  I  had  only 
told  the  lady  of  Liszt's  triumph  in  St.  Petersburg,  a 
thing  he  could  not  very  well  do  himself. 
Herein  we  all  resemble  one  another — hicjacet  homo! 
— The  following  incident  was  entirely  characteristic 
of  Liszt.  After  I  had  told  the  above-mentioned  lady 
the  story  of  Liszt's  triumph,  she  had  invited  me — 
simply  out  of  courtesv — to  plav  Weber  to  her. 
Liszt  found  me  still  at  the  piano,  and  said:  "You 
replace  me  also  at  the  piano" — (Vous  mefaites  done 
des  queues  au  piano?)  half  in  jest,  half  in  earnest,  as 
always  with  him — and  as  always  with  everything  in 
Paris! 

[65] 


Great   Piano   Virtuosos 

I  have  already  touched  on  the  altogether  charming 
— but  not  ^eat — style  of  Chopin's  playing ;  quite 
inimitable,  for  example,  in  his  so-called  Waltzes, 
which  waltzes  are  enchanted  rondos,  of  a  kind  un- 
known before.  Once  Meyerbeer  came  in  while  I  was 
taking  my  lesson  with  Chopin.  I  had  never  seen  him 
before.  Meyerbeer  was  not  announced ;  he  was  a 
king.  I  was  just  playing  the  Mazurka  in  C,  Op.  33 
— on  only  one  page,  which  contains  so  many  hun- 
dreds ;  I  named  it  the  "Epitaph  of  the  Idea" — so 
full  of  grief  and  sorrow  is  this  composition — the 
weary  flight  of  an  eagle  ! 

Meyerbeer  had  seated  himself;  Chopin  let  me  play  on. 
"  That  is  two-four  time,"  said  Meyerbeer. 
For  reply,  Chopin  made  me  repeat,  and  kept  time 
by  tapping  loudly  upon   the    instilment  with  his 
pencil ;  his  eyes  glowed. 
"Two-four,"  Meyerbeer  repeated  quietly. 
I  never  but  once  saw  Chopin  angry ;  it  was  at  this 
time  !  A  delicate  flush  colored  his  pale  cheeks,  and 
he  looked  very  handsome. 

"It  is  three-four,"  he  said  loiully,  he,  who  always 
spoke  so  softly  ! 

"Give  it  me,  for  a  ballet  for  my  opera  (VAfrkahiey 
then  kept  a  secret),  I  will  show  you,  then  r 
[66] 


Chopin 

"It  is  three -four,''''  almost  screamed  Chopin,  and 
played  it  himself.  He  played  it  several  times, 
counted  aloud,  and  stamped  the  time  with  his  foot 
— he  was  beside  himself!  It  was  of  no  use,  Meyer- 
beer insisted  it  was  two-four,  and  they  parted  in 
ill  humor.  It  w^as  anything  but  agreeable  to  me  to 
have  witnessed  this  little  scene.  Chopin  disappeared 
into  his  cabinet  without  saying  a  word — the  whole 
thing  had  lasted  but  a  couple  of  minutes.  I  in- 
troduced myself  to  Meyerbeer,  as  the  friend  of  his 
friend.  Count  Wielhorski  in  St.  Petersburg.  "May 
I  take  you  home?'"  he  kindly  asked,  as  he  stood 
on  the  platform  in  the  court,  where  his  coupe 
awaited  him.  We  were  hardly  seated,  when  he  be- 
gan: "I  had  not  seen  Chopin  in  a  long  time,  I  love 
him  dearly !  I  know  no  pianist  like  him,  no  composer 
for  piano  like  him!  The  piano  is  intended  for  deli- 
cate shading,  for  the  cantileiia,  it  is  an  instrument 
for  close  intimacy.  I  also  was  a  pianist,  once,  and 
there  was  a  time  when  I  aspired  to  be  a  virtuoso ; 
come  and  see  me,  when  you  come  to  Berlin — we 
are  now^  comrades;  when  people  meet  under  the 
roof  of  such  a  great  man,  it  is  for  life."  Meyer- 
beer spoke  German,  and  so  heartily!  He  pleased 
me  far  more  than  the  Parisians;  but  Chopin  was 
[67] 


Great  Piano  Virtuosos 

right.   Though  the  third  beat  in    the   composition 
referred   to  is  slurred  over,  it  no  less  exists,  but  I 
took  good  care  not  to  press  this  point  against  the 
composer  of  Les  Huguenots. 
Et  adhuc  suhjudice  Iw  est ! 

When  I  met  Meyerbeer  in  Berlin,  twenty  years  later, 
the  first  thing  he  said  was  :  "  Do  you  still  remember  ? 
It  was  during  your  lesson  that  I  interrupted/' 
"  You  hurt  his  feelings  !  What  must  Chopin  have 
felt,  when  i/ou  denied  the  triple  rhythm  to  a  compo- 
sition which  is  substantially  founded  on  that  rhythm 
— and  then  consider  his  irritability  V^ 
"I  did  not  intend  to  be  unkind,"  said  the  great  man, 
good-naturedly,  "  I  thought  he  wished  it  so  !*" 
That  which  particularly  characterized  Chopin's  play- 
ing was  his  rubato,  whereby  the  rhythm  and  time 
through  the  whole  remained  accurate.  "The  left 
hand,"  I  often  heard  him  say,  "  is  the  conductor,  it 
must  not  waver,  or  lose  ground ;  do  with  the  right 
hand  what  you  will  and  can."  He  taught :  "Suppos- 
ing that  a  piece  lasts  a  given  number  of  minutes  ;  it 
may  take  just  so  long  to  perform  the  whole,  but  in 
the  details  deviations  may  occur  !" 
But  I  heard  Chopin's  rubato  better  defined,  by  Liszt, 
at  Weimar  in  1871 — as  I  heard  from  his  distin- 
[68] 


Cho 


in 


guished  pupil,  the  capital  Russian  pianist  Neilissow. 
"Do  you  see  those  trees?"  Liszt  said  to  Neilissow; 
"The  wind  plays  in  the  leaves,  Life  unfolds  and 
develops  beneath  them;  but  the  tree  remains  the 
same — that  is  the  Chopin  ruhatoT 
In  the  fluctuation  of  the  tempo,  in  this  "Hangen 
und  Bangen'' — in  the  ruhato  of  his  conception, 
Chopin  was  ravishing;  every  note  stood  on  the  high- 
est degree  of  taste,  in  the  noblest  sense  of  that  term. 
When  he  embellished — which  he  rarely  did — it  was 
always  a  species  of  miracle  of  good  taste.  In  his 
entire  make-up,  Chopin  was  not  fitted  to  interpret 
Beethoven  or  Weber,  who  paint  along  great  lines 
with  great  brushes.  Chopin  was  a  painter  of  pastels, 
but  an  unrivalled  one.  Contrasted  with  Liszt  he 
might  stand  on  an  honorable  equality  with  him — as 
his  wife.  The  grand  Bflat  major  of  Beethoven,  Op. 
106,  and  Chopin,  are  mutually  exclusive. 
About  this  time  there  lived  in  Paris  a  pianist  by  the 
name  of  Gutmann;  a  rough  fellow  at  the  piano,  but 
with  robust  health,  and  a  herculean  frame.  Through 
these  physical  endowments,  he  impressed  Chopin — 
the  Sand  also  extended  to  him  her  protection.  Cho- 
pin praised  Gutmann  as  the  pianist  whose  interpre- 
tation of  his  compositions  was  most  grateful  to  him ! 
[69] 


Great  Piano  Virtuosos 

That  was  strong!  He  said  "he  had  taught  himself.'"' 
That  was  stronger,  he^  a  giant!  The  Scherzo  in  C 
sharp  minor,  Op.  39,  is  dedicated  to  Gutmann,  and 
Chopin  certainly  had  his  prize-fighter  fist  in  mind, 
when  he  composed  it,  for  no  left  hand  can  take  the 
chord  in  the  bass  (sixth  measure,  d  sharp,  y  sharp,  g, 
d  sharp,  y  sharp),  least  of  all  Chopin's  hand,  which 
arpeggio'd  over  the  easy-running,  narrow-keyed 
Pleyel.  Only  Gutmann  could  "knock  a  hole  in  a 
table "''*  with  that  chord!  I  heard  him  at  Chopin's;  he 
played  like  a  porter;  so  does  Genius  allow  itself  to 
be  deluded,  when  its  own  weaknesses  sit  in  judg- 
ment !  To  the  little  Filtsch,  and  me.  Gutmann  was  a 
horror;  we  derided  him;  he  learned  absolutely  no- 
thing of  Chopin,  though  Chopin  took  so  much 
trouble  to  try  and  carve  a  toothpick  out  of  this  log ! 
That  was  sufficient  to  blindfold  him.  Nothing  more 
was  ever  heard  of  this  Gutmann — he  was  a  dis- 
covery of  Chopin's. 

Chopin  died  of  a  broken  heart,  not  of  consumption ; 
he  died  at  the  same  age  as  Mozart  and  Raphael. 
Liszt  wrote  a  delightful  book — Frederic  Chopin,  hy 
Franz  Liszt,  it  is  called;  a  speaking  title.  It  was 
published  in  1845  by  Escudier,  in  Paris,  and  the 
entire  edition  was  sold  out.  I  was  unable  to  procure 
[70] 


Chopin 

a  copy,  either  in  Berlin,  Leipzig,  or  St.  Petersburg, 
whither  a  great  number  of  them  had  been  shipped 
— I  had  to  read  it  by  snatches,  in  the  library  of 
Count  Wielhorski.  It  has  been  repeatedly  asked  for 
in  Paris,  but  always  in  vain. 

George  Sand  speaks  of  Chopin  in  her  book,  "  Un 
hiver  au  midi  de  V Europe  T  it  is  a  description  of 
her  sojourn  in  Minorca,  with  Chopin,  whom  the 
Parisian  doctors  had  sent  to  the  Balearics,  he  being 
already  dangerously  ill  with  consumption.  She  does 
not  mention  his  name,  she  speaks  of  him  as  V Artiste. 
That  is  singularly  secret !  It  is  not  depreciating,  but, 
for  so  great  an  artist,  neither  is  it  sufficiently  appre- 
ciative; it  is  simply, yooZwÄ/?/  Parisian!  How  could 
a  French  nature  understand  Chopin?  A  Sand  could 
never  take  a  loftier  flight  in  music  than:  ^'Jouez- 
moi  quelque  chose,  Frederic!  unßdibus,  Frederic!^''  etc. 
V Artiste  was  caught  in  a  web,  to  which  the  spider 
was  not  lacking ! 

The  compositions  of  Chopin  opened  a  new  era  for 
the  pianoforte.  They  run  the  risk,  through  lack  of 
knowledge  of  the  master's  style  of  playing,  of  his 
intentions,  of  his  views  concerning  the  pianoforte,  of 
remaining  misunderstood;  because  there  is  infinitely 
more  in  the  playing  of  them  than  appears  on  the 
[71  ] 


Great  Piano  Virtuosos 

printed  page.  In  expressing  the  inner  soul  of  the  in- 
strument, and  in  their  treatment  of  the  same,  they 
must  be  ranked  above  Weber.  They  went  a  step 
further.  They  maintain  a  first  place  in  piano-litera- 
ture. They  occupy  the  plane  of  ideas  of  a  Novalis,  a 
Heine.  They  cannot  be  "arranged''  for  any  other 
instrument;  they  are  the  Soul  of  the  Piano.  They 
are  less  in  touch  with  general  musical  ideas  than 
with  piano-id^as.  They  are  often  great  works  in 
small  frames — they  are  elegiac — lyric — on  the 
standpoint  of  their  creator's  nationality;  yet  they 
are  ideal,  they  are  imperishable  in  the  history  of 
musical  thought. 

It  is  not  my  purpose  to  discuss  the  compositions  of 
Chopin;  it  would  be  impossible  to  do  so,  within  the 
small  compass  of  these  pages.  A  pamphlet  is  not  a 
book.  Only  a  book  would  suffice  to  give  a  complete 
picture  of  such  great  personalities  as  those  of  Liszt 
and  Chopin,  those  Dioscuri  of  the  modern  piano- 
forte. Such  a  picture  would  necessarily  include  a 
complete  historical  view  of  art  and  literature  as  it 
was  in  the  thirties  and  forties.  The  writers  of  that 
day  were  Balzac  and  Hugo,  Dumas  and  Sue,  Guizot 
and  Villemain;  the  painters,  Ary  Scheffer  and  Dela- 
croix; the  composers,  Cherubini,  Rossini,  Halevy 
[72] 


Chopin 


and  Berlioz.  They  all  belong  to  that  historic  view  of 
civilization. 

Only  in  this  focus  of  light  could  the  forms  of  Liszt 
and  Chopin  appear  in  life-size. 

In  comparison  to  the  later  condition  of  French  af- 
fairs— the  total  Napoleonic  eclipse — the  days  of  the 
Louis  Philippe  regime  were  a  great  epoch.  ''Notre 
voix  avait  tin  son  eclatant  quelle  a  perdu,''''  Jules 
Janin  wrote  me,  at  St.  Petersburg  in  1853. 
Musical  literature  is  a  concrete  form  of  the  ac- 
tivity of  universal  mental  culture,  and  hence  a 
min'or  of  the  life,  amid  whose  conditions  it  had  its 
origin. 

The  works  of  Chopin  are  no  exception ;  even  Chopin 
is  a  son  of  his  time,  and  only  through  the  history  of 
that  time  will  he  be  understood.  One  can  make  an 
absolute  estimate  of  Bach,  Haydn,  Mozart,  and 
Beethoven,  but  not  of  Weber,  even. 
Let  us  glance  at  the  compositions  of  Chopin.  We 
must  exclaim :  so  much  in  so  little!  in  barely  sixty- 
four  authentic  opus-numbers,  of  which  the  "first 
steps'*'  are  a  negligeable  quantity. — And  yet  so  much 
in  the  domain  of  Mind ! 

AVhat  could  one  not  say  about  the  finished  technique 

of  Chopin.'^  in  which  regard  he  even  ranks   above 

[73] 


Great  Piano   Virtuosos 

Weber!   ^Vhat   cannot  one  say  about  his  style  of 

writing,  his  harmony,  his  modulation,  his  treatment 

of  the  piano  in  general,  and  especially  of  the  left 

hand?^° 

Chopin's  tone-color  is  like  that  of  Raphael !  He  is 

the  Raphael    of  the   piano — though  one  must  not 

seek  his  Madonnas  in  the  churches — but  in  Life! 


[74] 


a  r  1    T  a  u  s  i  g 


Dem     Mann     muss    Musih- 

feuer  aus'm  Kopf  schlagen  — 

Rührung   passt  für    Weiber 

Beethovex 


Carl    Tausig 


SELDOM  has  a  death  excited  such  universal 
sympathy  as  did  that  of  Carl  Tausig,  cut  off, 
like  Chopin,  at  the  very  height  of  his  artistic 
career,  in  the  strongest  period  of  his  musical  develop- 
ment ! 

People  who  formed  no  part  in  the  musical  world, 
who  had  never  heard  Tausig,  but  had  only  heard  of 
him,  felt  the  loss  which  all  experienced,  who  hon- 
ored in  Tausig  not  alone  the  artist,  but  the  man. 
In  St.  Petersburg,  where  Tausig  had  appeared  but 
once,  every  one  spoke  of  the  sad  death  in  Leipsic,  as 
though  it  were  one  of  their  own  near  and  dear  ones 
who  had  entered  the  spiritual  life.  How  much  more 
must  this  have  been  the  case  in  Germany ! 
There  was  but  one  opinion  of  Tausig,  even  among 
the  envious! — unfortunately  there  are  such  among 
us  musicians,  whether  we  scratch  paper  with  pens, 
or  play  piano,  or  scrape,  or  blow;  only  the  thumper 
(Timpani !)  is  harmless — and  not  even  he,  in  Vienna, 
where  he  is  a  piano-virtuoso  to  boot ! 
There  are  men  who,  upon  their  first  appearance 
among  us,  make  a  lasting  impression.  To  these  few 
belonged  Tausig. 

[77] 


Great  Piano   Virtuosos 

In  the  late  autumn  of  1868  I  was  on  my  way 
towards  Europe's  stronghold  of  Reason,  Berlin — 
wdth  the  purpose  of  hearing  Tausig.  I  was  leaving 
behind  me  that  charming  butterfly-casket,  Dresden, 
where  one  finds  everything — as  in  a  surgeon's  case 
— excepting  caliber. 

I  had  had  in  Dresden  such  a  variety  of  thoughts 
concerning  the  greatness  of  the  composer  of  Der 
Freischütz  in  the  theatre,  and  at  the  piano,  that  I 
was  too  preoccupied  in  arranging  them  to  take  pre- 
cautionary measures  against  the  harvest-wind  blow- 
ing across  the  stubble,  and  felt  ill  by  the  time  we 
reached  the  lines  of  lamps  which  told  me  that  we 
were  nearing  Berlin;  in  contrast  to  the  dimness  of 
the  Saxon  nights,  these  lights  appeared  like  an  illu- 
mination in  honor  of  some  royal  event !  Berlin's  cali- 
ber already  began  to  assert  itself. 
My  artistic  friend,  the  General -Intendant,  Herr  von 
Hülsen,  had  promised  to  give,  that  evening — at  my 
request — Der  Freischütz,  from  which  I  had  not  been 
separated  for  the  past  forty  years.  He  wished  to  no- 
tice my  little  polemic  concerning  the  performance  of 
this  manifestation  of  German  Mind,  so  he  had  given 
orders  that  my  observations  should  be  considered; 
he  particularly  asked:  "We  surely  have  not  four 
[78] 


Carl  Tausi 


g 


trombones  in  Der  Freischütz?''''  At  Dresden,  the  in- 
troduction of  the  tuba  in  Weber's  music  struck  me 
Hke  a  cuckoo's  egg — quite  anti-Weber  in  effect.  No 
tuba,  m'lrum  spargens  sonuni,  but  with  the  sugges- 
tion, not  the  real  introduction  of  the  wind-instru- 
ments, as  in  Mozart's  Requiem.^^ 
Herr  von  Hülsen  had  kindly  offered  me  his  box,  and 
the  fatality  which  attends  a  traveller  brought  me 
there  long  before  the  time.  I  raised  the  gi'een  screen 
and  looked  down  into  the  orchestra,  where  but  two 
people  appeared  in  the  semi-darkness,  a  viola  and  a 
clarinet.  Said  the  viola  to  the  clarinet:  "Look  sharp 
now !  draw  back  w  ell  on  the  dominant  in  the  Over- 
ture, as  we  have  been  told;  he  is  already  here" — 
pointing  out  my  hiding-place  behind  the  screen. 
That  was  caliber:  the  consideration  of  a  possible 
truth  which  he  had  not  grasped! 
I  was  soon  quite  ill,  and  obliged  to  keep  my  room. 
I  wTote  Tausig,  whom  I  did  not  personally  know,  to 
say  how  much  I  regretted  my  inability  to  call  upon 
him.  In  but  a  few  hours  a  young  man,  somewhat 
under  middle  height  and  delightfully  unaffected — 
stood  before  me.  "I  am  Tausig;  as  you  were  unable 
to  come  to  me,  I  came  to  you — I  will  come  twice 
every  day,  if  I  can.  You  are  of  Liszt's  household,  so 
[79] 


Great   Piano   Virtuosos 

am  I — we  are  comrades,  and  I  am  at  your  command 
while  you  are  in  Berlin."'  Chopin  did  not  receive  me 
in  this  manner;  this  was  Berlin,  not  Paris!  That  was 
German  cordiality,  no  conventional  iciness  about 
that — and  yet  Tausig  occupied  the  same  position 
in  Berlin,  as  did  Chopin  in  Paris. " 
"Shall  I  send  you  a  piano  ?"  he  asked.  "I  have  some 
very  good  ones." 

I  was  soon  able  to  visit  him  in  the  Taubenstrasse, 
where  he  lived.  The  first  time  I  went  he  was  not  at 
home.  I  told  the  maid  I  would  await  her  master,  and 
made  my  way  directly  to  the  bookcase  in  the  first 
room.  On  the  handsome  bindings  in  the  first  row 
I  read  the  names  of  the  great  German  philoso- 
phers. I  was  less  astounded,  than  pleasantly  surprised. 
I  had  to  wait  a  long  while,  so  I  examined  one  book 
after  another  until  I  came  to  Arthur  Schopenhauer, 
when  Tausig  laid  his  hand  on  my  shoulder  saying: 
"Good  books,  are  they  not  .^  They  are  my  favorites 
— and  they  are  not  for  show,  I  read  them  often! 
Down  here  are  my  'naturals' — (he  spoke  jestingly 
of  the  natural  histories) — but  your  book  is  also 
here;  do  you  not  believe  me? — here  it  is.'' 
"Have  you  read  it  ? — truly  ?" 

He  hesitated  a  moment,  then  looked  me  frankly  in 
[80] 


Carl  Tausig 


the  eyes  and  said:  "I  have  read  the  French  one;  it 
made  a  fearful  row  at  Liszt's.'^ 

"That  is  the  poorest  one/'  I  repHed;  "read  the  Ger- 
man one — but  only  the  last  volume  is  for  you — the 
contemplation  of  the  last  works — for  instance  the 
A  major  Sonata,  Op.  101 ;  Holz  and  others  in  Vienna 
supplied  me  with  some  hitherto  unknown  particulars 
concerning  it."" 

"The  A  major  is  in  that?  It  is  my  favorite.  That 
shall  be  'taken  care  of.'  I  will  read  it  to-day."  He 
took  down  the  book,  and  laid  it  on  the  table  in  the 
drawing-room. 

We  Ment  into  the  next  room,  where  the  first  piano 
presented  itself.  On  this  the  Quasi-Fantasia  in  C 
sharp  lay  open.  "A  pupil  has  forgotten  this,'"*  said 
Tausig. 

"Did  you  know  that  that  should  be  played  only  in 
a  room  draped  in  black  ?" 
"No,  I  did  not  know  that,  at  all!'' 
"Holz  ^\Tote  me  about  it,  he  knows  it;  Beethoven 
confided  to  him  that  he  improvised  the  Adagio  while 
sitting  beside  the  coi-pse  of  a  friend  in  a  room  hung 
with  black." 

"That  is  just  lovely!"  laughed  Tausig,  in  his  humor- 
ous manner;  "if  a  pupil  ever  again  torments  me  with 
[81  ] 


Great  Piano  Virtuosos 

it,  I  shall  ask:  'Is  your  room  hung  with  black,  noth- 
ing but  black?  Not  otherwise.' '""^ 
In  this,  my  first  visit,  the  piano  played  no  part,  I 
avoided  it  purposely.  Tausig  said:  "Well,  we  have 
always  known  each  other,  and  you  shall  come  every 
day.  If  you  should  hear  a  piano-racket  when  you 
come  in,  that's  the  pupils !  Escape  into  my  study — 
there  stands  my  best  piano,  there  you  will  find 
scores,  the  newspapers  and,  /  think,  the  best  cigars 
in  Berlin.  If  you  still  hear  the  din,  you  must  play 
against  it;  that  is  what  I  do,  for  other  people  give 
lessons  at  my  house — I  am  collective,  you  see;  but 
I  can't  stand  it  long;  only  one  more  lustrum,  and 
I'm  off  to  the  University  to  amuse  myself  with  the 
study  of  philosophy  and  natural  history,  and  to  live, 
as  far  as  possible — without  a  piano.  Will  you  come 
with  me.''  What  do  you  think  of  Heidelberg?  Berlin 
is  wearing,  have  you  not  yet  noticed  that?  But  I 
am  very  fond  of  Berlin — still — only  five  more  yeai-s 
of  this  'collective'  business,  and  I  shall  say:  ^Jo- 
hanna geht,  und  nimmer  kehrt  sie  wieder P"^  That 
was  characteristic  of  Tausig — how  far  removed  from 
the  brazen  bonds  of  fashion  in  Paris ! 
At  my  second  visit,  Tausig  played  me  the  A  major 
Sonata,  Op.  101 — as  I  had  never  before  heard  it; 
[82  J 


Carl   Tausig 


the  fii-st  movement  became  an  idyl;  his  handling  of 
the  finale  with  the  fugue,  was  a  revelation.   "The 
second   theme,  in  the  finale  just  before  the  fugue, 
you  divide  between  two  wind-instruments;  I  heard 
— so  to  speak — the  oboe,'"  I  observed. 
"How  glad  I  am!  that,  in  fact,  is  my  intention  — 
but  I  never  told  any  one."** 
"The  nuance  in  touch  tells  it,""  I  replied. 
He  seemed  pleased. 

"The  first  movement  may  be  given  quasi  chitarra,''^ 
I  remarked. 

"Two  guitars,  or  four,  if  you  like!**'  He  played  the 
movement  so  that  I  could  hear  the  guitars,  and  said: 
"But  our  legato  is  better,  let  us  keep  to  the  grand 
style — Beethoven  was  no  painter  of  genre-pictures 
— I  will  now  play  you  Chopin's  Aflat  major  Polo- 
naise— it  is  a  little  specialty  of  mine!'** 
I  never  heard  this  triumphal,  stupendously  difficult 
piece  in  such  perfection,  played  with  such  easy  mas- 
tery over,  or  rather,   with  such  complete  oblivious- 
ness to,  the  mechanical  difficulties.  The  Trio,  in  de- 
scending octaves  for  the  left  hand,  aroused  an  aston- 
ishment to  which  I  gave  unstinted  expression: 
"That  is  beyond  everything!''  I  cried,  "how  can  you 
play  those  octaves  so  evenly,  so  sonorously — in  that 
[83] 


Great   Piano  Virtuosos 

furious  tempo?  Murmuring  pianissimo,  thunderous 
fortissimo  P""* 

"I  told  you  that  it  is  a  specialty!  Look,  my  hand  is 
small,  and  I  hold  it  still  closer  together;  my  left 
hand  is  so  formed  that  it  runs  by  itself  over  the  four 
degrees,  e,  £?  sharp,  c  sharp,  b — it^s  a  kind  of  lusiis 
naturae''''  (smiling);  "I  can  do  it  as  long  as  you  like 
— it  does  not  tire  me;  that  was  written  for  me. 
Strike  these  four  octaves  with  both  hands;  you 
can't  play  them  so  loud."*'  I  tried  it.  "See!  see!  very 
good,  but  not  as  loud  as  mine,  and  after  a  couple  of 
measures  you  are  tired — and  so  are  the  octaves!  I 
do  not  think  any  one  else  can  play  this  passage  just 
as  I  do — but  how  few  understand  it!  It  is  the 
tramp  of  the  horses  ift  the  Polish  Light  Cavalry !"" 
To  me,  the  supreme  artistic  moment  was  the  ex- 
position of  the  principal  motive,  at  every  entrance. 
It  was  the  Poles,  drunk  with  victory,  sweeping  away 
their  beautiful  partners  in  the  dance ! 
"I  have  heard  three  scales  played,  in  my  lifetime; 
Tausig  in  this  Polonaise^  Liszt  in  Beethoven's 
Scherzo,  Op.  106,  and  Henselt  in  Chopin's  A  viinor 
Etude;  these  are  the  Amazon  streams  of  the  piano, 
they  overspread  its  entire  extent,  and  are  inimi- 
table!'' 

[  84  ] 


Carl  Tausig 


Tausig  answered:  "No  mortal  can  vie  with  Liszt;  he 
dwells  upon  a  solitary  height!"^ 
"Do  you  also  play  Weber  ?''  I  asked. 
"I  do  not  like  to.  I  do  not  care  to  expose  my  in- 
most self  to  the  public,  and  that  is  what  Weber 
demands,  does  he  not  ?  I  play  for  the  sake  of  Art, 
and  I  believe  that  when  I  have  satisfied  her,  I  have 
also  satisfied  mankind!  The  Co)icertstücJc,  however, 
I  have  often  played,  but  it  is  not  within  my  prov- 
ince, like  Beethoven'*s  E  ßat  major  Concerto — that 
is  my  specialty;  I  shall  play  that  at  my  debut  in  St. 
Petersburg.  The  Philharmonics  have  written  for  me 
— who  are  they.^  I  shall  play  at  their  concert,  and 
will  give  my  own  self.'"* 

"The  Philharmonics,  as  you  call  them,  are  a  society, 
an  old  society,  of  St.  Petersburg  musicians  who  give 
two  concerts  yearly,  in  the  Hall  of  the  Nobles,  for 
the  benefit  of  their  widow^s  and  oi-phans.'' 
"I  will  come,  that  is  'taken  care  of;'  I  must  see  St. 
Petersburg.  Do  you  play  Beethoven  much.^'"* 
"Not  oftener  than  I  go  to  church  (Tausig  smiled 
slyly),  which  one  ordinarily  does  in  moderation. 
One  reads  Beethoven,  has  read  him  often,  will  read 
him  again  and  again.  The  actual  Beethoven  lives 
in  the  Grchestra.'"* 

[85] 


Great    Piano    Virtuosos 

"About  Weber,""  said  Tausig,  "I  have  designs  on 
the  Invitation ;  I  wish  to  work  on  it,  and  should  like 
to  talk  with  you  about  it.  At  my  house  we  should 
be  often  disturbed.  I  frequently  can  find  a  free  hour 
in  the  midst  of  my  business,  if  you  would  wait  for 
me  ?  there  are  suitable  meeting-places."" 
I  proposed  the  Maison  Doree  on  Unter  den  Linden. 
There  we  met  and  talked  undisturbed.  I  admired 
the  modesty  of  the  gi'eat  artist;  his  eagerness  to 
hear  about  Chopin,  whose  acquaintance  he  had  never 
had  the  opportunity  to  make,  and  yet  whose  works 
he  interpreted  as  no  other  could ! 
I  told  Tausig  of  Chopin's  peculiar  treatment  of  that 
innocent  Nocturne  in  Eflat,  Op.  9,  No.  2. 
"That  is  interesting,"'  said  Tausig,  "I  will  play 
through  the  bass  with  hath  hands,  myself;  that  is 
the  place  for  the  guitar — that  shall  be  'taken  care 
of.""" 

But  he  was  most  interested  in  the  fact  of  Chopin 
being  so  critical  and  hard  to  please  in  the  first  four 
measures  of  the  great  C  minor  Nocturne  (Op.  48, 
No.  1,  Lento) — apparently  so  simple.  In  the  second 
measure  occurs  the  sixteenth-note  figure  r/,  c  flat,  J\ 
g.  The  point  was,  to  glide  from  this  g  to  r,  in  the 
third  measure.  Chopin  was  never  satisfied  with  this. 
[86] 


Carl  Tausig 


He  said  to  me:  "It  is  possible  for  you  to  do  this, 
so  you  must  do  it.*"  At  last  I  was  able  to  satisfy  him, 
but  it  took  a  long  while — sometimes  the  g  was  too 
short,  and  changed  to  the  c  too  quickly — some- 
times it  was  just  the  other  way.  "There  is  a  mean- 
ing in  it,""  Chopin  said.  It  was  just  as  difficult  to 
please  with  the  lifting  of  the  c  before  the  eighth- 
note  rest  in  the  sixteenth-note  group  e  flat,  c,  in 
the  fourth  measure;  the  c  was  always  too  short  or 
too  long!  I  found  a  way  out  by  drawing  my  finger 
along  the  key  until  I  came  to  the  end,  and  then 
drawing  it  off  at  the  sharp  corner;  at  last  he 
was  satisfied!  But  it  was  nothing  when  compared 
to  the  manner  in  which  Chopin  played  both  these 
passages ! 

"I  quite  understand  him,"  remarked  Tausig,  "I 
shall  '  take  care  of  that." 

"Chopin  intended  the  passage  from  ^  to  c  as  a 
question ;  c  gave  the  answer." 
"So  I  understood  it,"  said  Tausig. 
Just  as  rarely  was  Chopin  satisfied  with  the  first 
measure  in  the  C  minor  Nocturne;  the  quarter-notes 
g^  a  flat,  should  be  prominent,  being  thematic,  but 
they  were  always  too  forte  or  too  piano.  Chopin 
always  used  a  Pleyel,  an  instrument  with  light 
[87] 


Great  Piano   Virtuosos 

action,  on  which  one  can  do  such  shading  much 
more  easily  than  on  one  of  mellower,  fuller  tone. 
During  the  next  few  days,  Tausig  played  me  both 
Nocturnes  in  the  most  finished  manner,  in  fact,  just 
as  Chopin  played  them.  He  was  pleased  himself,  and 
said:  "I  ought  to  have  known  Him  !"  Never  was  a 
composer  so  lovingly  cherished  by  a  virtuoso,  as  was 
Chopin  by  Tausig. 

One  day  Tausig  appeared  at  my  rooms  early  in  the 
morning:  "The  Baroness  Schweinitz  invites  you  to 
a  soiree  at  her  house;  she  is  my  best  pupil — indeed, 
I  can  scarcely  call  her  a  pupil,  she  is  an  artist,  and 
a  charming  woman.  You  will  meet  interesting  peo- 
ple there.  The  Baroness  sends  her  excuses  that  the 
Baron  has  not  called  on  you."' 

"I  do  not  stand  upon  ceremony,  and  consider  my- 
self honored  by  the  invitation,*"  was  my  reply. 
"  Then  I  will  be  here  this  evening  at  eight  sharp, 
and  we  will  drive  to  the  Commandant's  house."*"' 
As  we  went  through  the   vestibule  into  the  large, 
half-lit  stuccoed  hall,  I  said:  "We  have  such  halls 
in  St.  Petersburg,  but  not  many."*"* 
"I  have  often  played  here,"*""  said  Tausig;  "we  give 
charity  concerts  here,  in  which  the  Baroness  takes 
the  lead." 

[88] 


Carl  Tausi 


g 


Tausig  walked  to  a  side-door  of  mahogany,  richly 
gilded,  and  opened  it.  A  suite  of  three  salons,  bright 
as  day,  lay  before  us;  in  the  first,  we  were  most  win- 
ningly  received  by  the  Baroness.  The  gathering  con- 
sisted of  several  distinguished  artists  belonging  to 
the  musical  circle  of  Tausig  and  the  Baroness;  the 
Austrian  Ambassador,  Count  Wimpffen,  and  his 
wife;  the  Russian  military  plenipotentiary.  Count 
Kutusow;  and  the  master  of  the  house,  Couii:  Min- 
ister von  Schweinitz.  Tausig  had  not  said  too  much ; 
in  a  composition  of  Schumann's,  and  a  difficult, 
brilliant  piece  of  Tausig's,  the  Baroness  proved  her- 
self a  finished  artist.  Tausig's  demeanor  particularly 
pleased  me:  he  quite  effaced  himself — it  was  as 
though  he  were  not  there  at  all,  and  yet  he  was 
everywhere,  and  the  life  of  the  animated  conver- 
sation. This  soiree  lives  among  my  musico-social 
memories  as  one  equally  distinguished  for  intellec- 
tuality and  good  taste.  Since  the  death  of  the  great 
artist  who  amiably  opened  these  doors  to  me,  the 
memory  of  it  has  become  a  sacred  one.  In  the  higher 
circles  of  St.  Petersburg,  Berlin  has  a  reputation  for 
stiffness  of  etiquette.  Here  was  one  of  the  best 
houses  in  Berlin  opened  to  me,  a  stranger,  whose 
only  recommendation  was,  being  knowTi  to  Tausig. 
[89] 


Great   Piano   Virtuosos 

As  we  drove  home,  Tausig  said:  "You  have  given 
me  uncommon  pleasure!  You  sat  at  the  piano  just 
as  He  does." — 

"You  cannot  beHeve  that  it  ever  occurred  to  me 
to  imitate  Liszt?''"'  I  was  somewhat  disconcerted — 
what  could  Tausig  mean? 

"You  do  not  understand  me;  I  am  in  earnest;  there 
is  no  imitation  about  it,  only  an  affinity  in  the  spirit 
of  the  matter,  understood  by  myself  alone; — not 
at  all  the  way  you  sat  there — something  to  which 
you  gave  no  thought  in  your  intercourse  with  the 
piano;  it  was  He,  as  he  lives  and  moves,  I  tell  you, 
and  I  could  think  only  of  Him  the  whole  evening!" 
Seldom  is  a  master  so  lovingly  reverenced  by  a  pupil, 
as  Liszt  by  Tausig!  He  had  such  a  tiTie,  loyal,  lov- 
ing heart!  Such  an  amiable  nature  should  never 
have  been  wounded  in  its  inner  life,  in  the  most 
sensitive  spot.  In  Tausig''s  character  humanism  was 
prominent,  like  the  artistic  height  on  which  he  stood. 
Dark  clouds  seemed  to  have  gathered  early  over  his 
life;  the  artist  took  refuge  from  them  in  his  Art, 
his  virtuosity  was  a  veil  behind  which  the  artist 
sought  to  conceal  the  man  —  in  other  Mords,  to 
mould  his  art  objectively.  In  his  daily  life  he  re- 
garded as  a  simple  human  duty,  what  others  call 
[90] 


Carl  Tausig 


woi-shipping  God.  Not  with  any  desire  to  shine, 
but  with  an  earnest  purpose,  did  Tausig  take  up 
the  study  of  philosophy;  he  was  far  from  caring 
for  ostentation,  he  never  courted  applause — it  was 
quite  indifferent  to  him:  a  fact  I  had  good  oppor- 
tunity to  observe  at  his  triumphs  in  St.  Peters- 
burg, Melancholy,  a  certain  profundity  of  medita- 
tion, which  caused  him  to  appear  absent-minded, 
while  his  thoughts  were  but  too  vividly  actual, — 
dominated  him;  he  tried  to  conceal  the  underlying 
vein  of  sadness,  but  it  was  clearly  evident,  and  the 
dash  of  humor  in  his  conversation  w^as  also  the 
flight  of  his  spirit  before  the  gloomy  spectre,  the 
atra  cura  of  Horace !  I  found  a  key  to  his  artistic 
nature  in  the  manner  in  which  he  approached  the 
Barcarole  of  Chopin.  "Do  you  know  the  Barca- 
role.?" he  asked  me. 
"No!" 

"I  will  play  it  to  you  on  Sunday  ;  but  come  early,  be- 
fore the  hour  my  friends,  Messrs.  Davidsohn  and  C.  F. 
Weitzmann,  and  some  on  the  staS  oi  Kladderadatsch,  '^ 
usually  drop  in.  This  is  between  ourselves;  it  is  an 
intei-pretation  which  must  not  be  attempted  be- 
fore more  than  two  people;  I  will  disclose  myself 
to  you — I  love  the  piece,  but  I  seldom  play  it." 
[91] 


Great  Piano  Virtuosos 

That  same  day  I  read  the  Barcarole  through  care- 
fully, at  a  music-store.  The  piece  did  not  please 
me  at  all;  a  long  composition  in  nocturne-style, 
bombastic  in  tonality  (F sharp  major)  and  modula- 
tion ;  a  tower  of  figuration  reared  on  an  insecure 
foundation!  And  the  greatest  mechanical  difficul- 
ties into  the  bargain — well,  the  latter  were  Tausig's 
affair ! 

How  sadly  was  I  at  fault ! 

Tausig  explained  the  piece,  which,  as  an  exception, 
he  did  not  play  by  heart: — "This  tells  of  two  per- 
sons, of  a  love-scene  in  a  secret  gondola;  we  might 
call  this  mise  en  scene  symbolic  of  lover's  meetings 
in  general.  That  is  expressed  in  the  thirds  and 
sixths;  the  dual  character  of  two  notes  (persons) 
runs  through  the  whole — it  is  all  two-voiced,  or 
two-souled.  In  this  modulation  into  C  sharp  major 
(marked  dolce  sfogato)  one  recognizes  a  kiss  and  an 
embrace — that  is  plain  enough!  When,  after  three 
measures  of  introduction,  this  bass  solo — an  easy 
rocking  theme — enters  in  the  fourth,  and  this  theme 
is,  nevertheless,  employed  only  as  an  accompaniment 
throughout  the  entire  composition;  on  this  lies  the 
cantilena  in  two  voices,  and  we  have  a  sweet  and 
long  dialogue.  From  the  chain  of  double  trills  on, 
[92] 


Carl  Tausi 


g 


the  story  becomes  difficult  to  tell — that  is  my  affair, 
ril  *take  care  of  that.  Turn  the  leaves  well  and 
listen  attentively."^ 

Seldom  in  my  life  have  I  heard  so  sweet,  such  a  won- 
derfully beautiful  story  told  at  the  piano.  Every 
note  spoke,  the  artist  gave  way  to  the  man  in  Tau- 
sig;  and  how  interesting  were  both! 
How  difficult,  how  impossible,  except  to  subjective 
interpretation,  it  is  to  carry  through  nine  pages  of 
enervating  music,  in  the  same  long-breathed  rhythm 
(twelve-eighths)  so  much  interest,  so  much  emotion, 
so  much  action,  that  I  regretted  that  the  long  piece 
was  not  longer! 

Tausig  was  here  the  living  impersonation  of  Chopin, 
he  played  like  him,  he  felt  as  he  did,  he  was  Chopin 
at  the  piano ! 

I  told  him  so  frankly,  and  he  felt  the  sincerity  of 
conviction  in  my  words.  But  he  .was  always  careful, 
even  suspicious,  on  such  occasions,  perhaps  because 
he  was  never  of  a  merry  disposition,  never  able  en- 
tirely to  dissipate  his  clouds ! 

Tausig  gave  concerts  in  Berlin  which  were  entirely 
devoted  to  Chopin's  compositions,  the  first  instance 
of  such  a  thing,  I  think — excepting  the  yearly  con- 
certs intimes  given  in  Paris  by  the  master  himself. 
[93] 


Great  Piano  Virtuosos 

How  thankless  undertakings  of  this  sort  usually  are ! 
How  grateful  we  should  be  to  Tausig  for  taking 
such  an  initiative  with  regard  to  Chopin,  whose 
pianistic  importance  is  by  far  too  lightly  esti- 
mated. Tausig  also  impressed  me  deeply  in  his 
interpretation  of  Chopin's  Ballade  in  F  minor.  It 
has  three  requirements:  "The  comprehension  of  the 
programme  as  a  whole — for  Chopin  writes  according 
to  programme,  to  the  situations  in  life  best  known 
to,  and  understood  by,  himself;  the  exposition  of 
the  motives  in  detail,  and  in  an  adequate  man- 
ner ;  the  conquest  of  the  stupendous  difficulties  in 
complicated  figures,  winding  harmonies  and  formi- 
dable passages."'"* 

Tausig  fulfilled  these  requirements,  presenting  an 
embodiment  of  the  signification  and  the  feeling  of 
the  work.  The  Ballade  {andante  con  moto,  six-eighths) 
begins  in  the  minor  key  of  the  dominant;  the 
seventh  measure  comes  to  a  stand  before  Sijermata 
on  C  major.  The  easy  handling  of  these  seven 
measures  Tausig  interpreted  thus:  "The  piece  has 
not  yet  begun;""  in  his  firmer,  nobly  expressive  ex- 
position of  the  principal  theme,  free  from  sentimen- 
tality (to  which  one  might  easily  yield),  the  "grand 
style"'"'  found  due  scope. 

[94] 


Carl  Tausig 


An  essential  requirement  in  an  instrumental  vir- 
tuoso is  that  he  should  undei-stand  how  to  breathe, 
and  how  to  allow  his  hearers  to  take  breath — giving 
them  opportunity  to  arrive  at  a  better  understand- 
ing. By  this  I  mean  a  well-chosen  incision,  the  cce- 
sura,  and  a  lingering  ("letting  in  air,""  Tausig  clev- 
erly called  it)  which  in  no  way  impairs  rhythm  and 
time,  but  rather  brings  them  into  stronger  relief; 
a  lingering  which  our  signs  of  notation  cannot  ade- 
quately express, '5  because  it  is  made  up  of  atomic 
time-values.  Rub  the  bloom  from  a  peach  or  from 
a  butterfly;  that  which  remains  will  belong  to  the 
kitchen,  to  natural  history! — It  is  not  otherwise 
\nth  Chopin;  the  bloom  consisted  in  Tausig's  treat- 
ment of  the  Ballade. 

He  came  to  the  first  passage, — as  one  would  ordi- 
narily say;  the  motive  from  among  blossoms  and 
leaves,  as  one  must  say  for  Chopin — a  figurated 
recuiTence  of  the  principal  theme  is  in  the  inner 
parts — its  poh'phonic  variant.  A  little  thread  con- 
nects this  with  the  chorale-like  introduction  of  the 
second  theme.  The  theme  is  strongly  and  abruptly 
modulated,  perhaps  a  little  too  much  so.  Tausig 
tied  the  little  thread  to  a  doppio  movimento  in  two- 
fom-  time,  but  thereby  resulted  sextolets,  which 
[95] 


Great   Piano   Virtuosos 

threw  the  chorale  into  yet  bolder  relief.  Then  fol- 
lowed a  passage  a  tempo,  in  which  the  principal 
theme  played  hide-and-go-seek. 

How  clear  it  all  became,  as  Tausig  played  it!  Of 
technical  difficulties  he  knew  literally  nothing;  the 
intricate  and  evasive  parts  were  as  easy  as  the 
easiest — I  might  say,  easier! 

I  admired  the  short  trills  in  the  left  hand,  which 
were  trilled  out  quite  independently,  £is  if  by  a  sec- 
ond player;  the  gliding  ease  of  the  cadence  marked 
dolcissimo.  It  swung  itself  into  the  higher  register, 
where  it  came  to  a  stop  before  A  major,  just  as  the 
introduction  stopped  before  C  major.  Then,  after  the 
theme  has  once  more  presented  itself  in  a  modified 
form  (variation),  it  comes  under  the  pestle  of  an 
extremely  figurate  coda,  which  demands  the  study 
of  an  artist,  the  strength  of  a  robust  man — the 
most  vigorous  pianistic  health,  in  a  word! 
Tausig  overcame  this  threatening  group  of  terrific 
difficulties,  whose  appearance  in  the  piece  is  well 
explained  by  the  programme,  without  the  slightest 
effiart.  The  coda,  in  modulated  harp-tones,  came  to 
a  stop  before  a.Jermata  which  corresponded  to  those 
before  mentioned,  in  order  to  cast  anchor  in  the 
haven  of  the  dominant,  finishing  with  a  witches' 
[96] 


Carl  Tausig 


dance  of  triplets  doubled  in  thirds.  This  eighteen- 
page  piece  winds  up  with  extreme  bravura. 
Tausig's  left  hand  was  a  second  right;  he  never  ap- 
peared even  to  notice  difficulties!  Anton  Rubinstein 
called  him  "the  infallible ;""'  Liszt  spoke  of  his  fin- 
gers as  brazen ;  Serow  said  to  me  whenever  we  spoke 
of  pianists:  "Hear  Tausig;  you  must  hear  Tausig  1"^ 
His  distinguishing  characteristic  was,  that  he  never 
played  for  effect,  but  was  always  absorbed  in  the 
piece  itself  and  its  artistic  interpretation.  This  ob- 
jectivity the  general  public  never  undei'stood;  when- 
ever serpents  are  strangled,  it  always  wants  to  know 
just  how  big  and  dangerous  they  are,  and  judges  of 
this  by  the  performer  s  behavior.  The  general  pub- 
lic thinks  that  whatever  appears  easily  surmounted, 
is  not  really  difficult,  and  that  son  or  daughter  at 
home  might  do  it  just  as  well !  But  it  was  this  out- 
ward calm,  this  perfect  steadiness  of  Tausig's  atti- 
tude, which  crowned  his  virtuosity. 
Well  might  he  say,  as  I  once  heard  him:  "I  am  no 
drawing-room  pianist,  it  is  only  in  public  that  I 
can  command  all  my  resources!"  Eccentric  gestures, 
and  playing  with  all  one's  limbs,  may  be,  and  are, 
very  effective  with  the  public;  but  such  elements 
are  inimical  to  art.  Tausig's  playing  was  flawlessly 
[97] 


Great  Piano  Virtuosos 

moulded. — Tausig  would  have  charmed  Chopin, 
whose  perfect  ease  in  overcoming  mechanical  diffi- 
culties he  possessed,  though  paired  with  far  superior 
strength  and  power. 

Before  I  left  Berlin,  I  discussed  with  Tausig  Liszt's 
Fantasia  on  the  Don  Juan  motive,  which  calls  for 
the  highest  powers  of  the  piano-virtuoso.  Tausig 
said,  with  noble  modesty:  "For  a  long  time  I  could 
not  conquer  this  piece;  not  until  I  had  returned  to 
Bach  and  the  last  Beethoven  Sonatas,  and  studied 
them  again  and  again,  would  it  surrender  to  me. 
You  raise  no  objection  to  my  interpretation  of  the 
Don  Juan  Fantasia .?  Well,  I  tell  myself  that  I  have 
not  yet  conquered  the  difficulties,  I  have  only  at- 
tacked them.  He  only  is  superior  to  them — only 
He!  This  is  the  secret  of  the  impression  He  makes ! 
You  said  in  your  French  book:  *He  is  the  Paganini 
of  the  piano";  that  is  true,  and  it  pleased  him,  but 
it  says  far  too  little.  Liszt  exhibits  in  himself  an 
absolute  mastery  over  the  entire  realm  of  musical 
art,  he  is  a  predestined  composer  in  the  largest 
forms — in  all  !  Out  of  his  great  diversity  of  gifts, 
arises  his  virtuosity;  Paganini  never  soared  as  high 
as  Liszt,  he  stopped  at  virtuosity !" 
In  fact,  Liszt's  piano-technique  has  been  understood 
[98  ] 


Carl  Tausig 


as  a  spiritualized  technique,  a  thing  apart; — as  a 
new  train  of  ideas,  as  a  thread  spun  on  from  Bach 
and  Beethoven  to  us,  reaching  to  the  compositions 
of  Liszt,  as  to  the  latest  expression  of  the  possibili- 
ties of  the  piano ! 

The  great  piano-virtuosos  of  the  century  may  be 
compared  with  continents  and  countries. 
Liszt,  Chopin,  and  Henselt  are  continents;  Tausig, 
Rubinstein,  and  Biilow  are  countries. 
Thalberg  was  only  the  correct  "gentleman -rider''  of 
the  piano,  during  the  forty  years  which  seem  to  lie 
a  whole  century  behind  our  days !  A  rider,  no  matter 
how  well  he  sits  his  horse,  must  get  off  sometimes ! 
Thalberg  rode  perpetually.  He  called  it  Fantalsie — 
the  one  on  Moses,  for  instance;  he  made  music,  like 
the  trumpeter  in  Kaufmannes  Museum  in  Dresden — 
blown  through  the  air,  not  through  the  soul.  Thal- 
berg  was  the  well-groomed  piano;  who  saddles  a  note 
of  his  now-a-days?  Only  one  of  his  lucubrations  has 
musical  promise — and  that  only  in  the  beginning, 
the  trot — his  second  Caprice  (E  flat  major),  in  which 
the  motive  is  chaniiingly  bridled,  and,  at  the  end 
of  the  interminable  performajice  (as  the  English  call 
musical  productions),  sets  off  on  a  steeplechase  and 
clears  the  fence  in  octave-leaps  of  two  octaves! 
[99] 


Great  Piano  Virtuosos 

Thalberg  said  that  he  would  undertake  to  play  side 
by  side  with  Liszt,  but  that  Liszt  must  sit  behind 
a  screen,  and  must  not  be  seen  while  he  was  at  it! 
Just  there,  and  for  the  first  time,  Thalberg  would 
have  been  thrown,  for  Liszt^s  soul  would  not  have 
stayed  behind  the  screen!  "You  resemble  the  spirit 
which  you  comprehend,  not  me!"  Liszt  might  have 
told  him. 

Thalberg  was  a  finished  man  of  the  world  at  the 
piano;  the  thumb  of  his  right  hand  was  his  groom, 
whom  he  had  elevated  to  the  exalted  position  of 
conductor  of  the  melody !  The  shifting  of  the  accom- 
paniment to  the  middle  range  of  the  piano  was  not 
the  invention  of  Thalberg,  but  was  introduced  by 
Beethoven  ^^  in  his  first  Piaiio-concerto  in  C  major. 
Op.  15,  Largo,  which  appeared  in  1801;  then  again 
by  Weber  in  the  Andante  of  his  D  vi'uior  Sonata, 
in  his  Invitation,  and  in  the  Rondo  of  his  Eßat  ma- 
jor Cojicerto. 

An  oft-spoken  opinion  is  to  the  effect,  that  the 
piano  has  reached  its  climax  in  Liszt  and  Chopin. 
Every  period  has  its  raison  d'etre;  virtuosity  had 
hers,  and  Tausig  is  the  best  evidence  of  this  fact. 
It  is  the  same  with  creative  work.  Life  being  divided 
between  Church  and  Theatre — between  the  things 
[  100] 


Carl  Tausi 


g 


symbolized  by  these  factors — the  representatives  of 
these  "stages"  on  the  piano  are,  foremostly,  Beet- 
hoven and  Weber. 

Weber's  sympathy  was  with  life  in  general,  Cho- 
pin''s  with  the  life  of  the  higher  classes  of  society  in 
particular.  Chopin  did  not  feel  less  deeply  than 
Weber,  because  he  Jilt  in  Paris;  but  Chopin's  sym- 
pathy was  special,  while  Weber's  was  general — he 
sprang  from  German  soil !  There  is  no  trace  of  opera 
or  symphony  in  Chopin's  music,  while  these  ele- 
ments haunt  Weber's  piano-music  like  the  fantastic 
^vill-o'-the-wisps  in  the  Wolfsschliwht.  Chopin  is 
always  pure  pianoforte,  with  a  masterly  pianistic 
treatment  and  piano-style  superior  to  Weber;  Cho- 
pin commands  all  technical  resources,  which  Weber 
never  mastered  to  an  equal  degree. 
The  relation  of  Chopin  to  Beethoven  and  Weber 
on  the  piano,  is  that  of  a  peer  to  these  great  men. 
Beethoven''s  piano-music  is  to  be  regarded  in  the 
light  of  cartoons  for  orchestra  and  quartets,  just  as 
Kaulbach's  cartoons  in  the  Cathedral  at  Berlin  are 
to  be  understood  as  paintings.  Beethoven,  as  the  in- 
carnate Genius  of  the  symphony,  is  always  sym- 
phonic, both  in  his  piano-concertos  and  in  his  violin- 
concertos.  His  thoughts,  in  their  flight,  leave  the 
[101] 


Great   Piano  Virtuosos 

piano,  never  to  return — they  are  lost  in  the  infini- 
tude of  the  Idea! 

Even  his  quartets  are  abbreviated  symphonies,  de- 
spite their  quartet-like  equipment. 
Tausig  understood  how  to  discriminate  in  Beethoven, 
as  well  as  in  Weber,  at  the  piano.  He  played  Beetho- 
ven's A  major  Sonata,  Op.  101,  with  the  most  charm- 
ing piano-coloring;  the  powerful  Orchestra  Fantasia 
in  the  F  minor  Sonata,  Op.  57 — which  is  called  appas- 
sionata  (as  though  all  Beethoven's  Sonatas  were  not 
appassioiiate ! ) — he  performed  orchestrally.  He  gave 
the  Aflat  major  Sonata  with  Pompeian  coloring; 
and  the  last  Sonata,  Op.  Ill,  was  colossal! 
Nothing  is  more  important  to  the  virtuoso  than  a 
proper  comprehension  of  the  tone-poet  whom  he 
undertakes  to  interpret.  In  this  relation  Tausig's 
lofty  general  education  stood  him  in  good  stead, 
and  his  fine  taste,  largely  the  result  of  scientific 
research,  in  all  things. 

One  may  say  what  one  will,  but  as  an  authoritative 
musical  critic,  Tausig  takes  an  exceptional  position; 
our  great  master  Liszt  will,  for  all  time,  be  taken 
as  the  highest  standard  of  musical  criticism. 
Before  I  speak  of  my  meeting  with  Tausig  in  St. 
Petersburg,  I  must  relate  one  more  reminiscence 
[  102  ] 


Carl  Tausi 


g 


of  Berlin,  of  that  late  autumn  of  1868,  ever-mem- 
orable by  reason  of  the  artist's  genial  kindliness. 
Once  when  we  were  quite  alone,  Tausig  made  me 
sit  at  his  piano,  and  said:  "Play  the  highest  part  of 
this;  the  piece  cannot  be  known  to  you." 
It  was  a  set  of  short,  expressive  compositions  for 
four  hands,  by  Schumann. 

"There,  you  played  that  exactly  as  He  would  l"** 
I   looked  up  at  him,  confused;  on  the  one  hand,  I 
could  not  suppose  that  he  was  quizzing  me;  on  the 
other,  I  appeared  very  foolish  to  myself. 
"I  am  in  earnest,"^  he  continued,  "I  repeat  it,  you 
played  it  just  as  He  would !" 

"But  there  is  nothing  io  play,  only  to  understand.'" 
"That  is  just  it — one  does  not  teach  that  to  one^s 
lady-pupils!  It  quite  astonished  me;  those  are  the 
Journeys — your  foot-tours  in  Switzerland!'"  (He  was 
still  humorous  in  1868;  when  I  saw  him  in  St. 
Petei-sburg,  in  1870,  that  phase  of  his  character  had 
quite  disappeared.)  In  a  few  days  I  appeared  with 
two  books  of  music  in  my  hand. 

"Ah,''  said  he,  "now  you  are  going  to  take  revenge 
for  my  examination;  yes,  I   admit  that  it  was  an 
examination.  I  wished  to  see — never  mind,  tell  me 
in  what  /  am  to  be  examined.?"" 
[103] 


Great   Piano   Virtuosos 

"You  see:  'Sonates  progressives  et  agreables.'''"  Tau- 
sig  laughed  most  heartily  and  asked:  "What  is  that 
to  us?" 

"To  give  pleasure,""  was  my  answer;  "these  are  little 
operas  in  disguise,  by  Weber;  just  play  the  bass  and 
listen   attentively.   The   original   is   for   piano   and 
violin;  this  arrangement  is  by  Czerny — as   Cranz, 
the  publisher  in  Hamburg,  told  me  when  I  went  to 
see  him  about  it.  Sonate  1,  rectitbs  Sonatine,  F  ma- 
jor.   Allegro;   Before    the   Gate,    Whitsuntide;  Lar- 
ghetto;    Grandmother'' s    Story   at    the   Fireplace,   B 
major;   Rondo,    amaMle,   F    major,    The   Posthorn. 
There  is  nothing  of  all  this  in  the  music,  but  I  will 
bring  it  out,"  I  said,  confidently. 
Tausig:  "Let  us  begin  with  the  fireplace."" 
"Yes!  That  is  really  very  interesting!  Once  more! 
(begged  Tausig)  you  seem  to  know  it  very  well."" 
"Twenty  years  of  faithful  wedlock!" 
"And  still  in  love  ?  Well,  let  us  go  before  the  Gate,"" 
laughed  Tausig.  "Also  very  interesting,"*"*  he  admitted. 
"But  the  Amabile,  the  Posthorn  story,  is  nothing!" 
"But  the  little  eight-measure  minore f^^''  I  asked. 
"Yes !  That  is  by  a  master  again !" 
"Sonate  2,  Moderato,  carattere  espagnuolo,  G  ma- 
jor, A    German  in  Seville.  Adagio,  C  minor,  From 
[  104  ] 


Carl  Tausi 


g 


a  lost  Opera,  Didone  abbandonata;  Rondo,  G  ma- 
jor; Polish  Air,  In  the  country,  St.  John^s  -^öf^-" 
Tausig  remarked:  ''This  Spain  might   be   in    Ger- 
many!"' 

"Just  like  the  Spain  in  Don  Giovanni,  I  think."" 
"You  think  so?  H'm,  h'm!  Well,  perhaps!  Adagio, 
interesting;  Rondo,  charming,  modulation  to  B  flat, 
into  the  lower  dominant  (C  major),  delicious — now 
the  Rondo  again — Oho,  how  abruptly  the  thing 
closes !" 

"Sonate  3,    Air   russe,  D  minor,    The  truth  about 
Russia,    unJcnown   in    Germany,    (how    ingenuously 
Tausig  glanced  at  me!).  Maggiore,  charming;  see,  I 
have  written  over  it  *  amoroso'  (he  smiled  so  kindly); 
Rondo,    Presto,    six-eight,  D  major.  Dance   of  the 
Elves,  charming  beyond  description."" 
"Let  us  have  the  Elves,  then,""  urged  Tausig. 
"Yes,  see   there!   That   is   a   serious   matter!   The 
Rondo    is   very   beautiful,"    said    Tausig  joyously, 
"  and  how  abrupt  at  the  close  !  That  must  be  true ! 
Now  the  Rondo  over  again  !  "^  he  commanded. 
"Notice  the  festoons  of  flowers  from  the  thirteenth 
measure   on  !  Another   seduction    of  Hiion ;  but  I 
must  beg  you  to  play  the  primo  now,  because  I  do 
the  scales  so  badly."" 

[105] 


Great   Piano   Virtuosos 

"  There  is  one  in  the  bass  that  is  more  important,  the 
whole  orchestra  enters  there ;  I  have  not  neglected  my 
part  —  I  shall  stay  below  ! "  answered  Tausig. 
We  played  the  Rondo  three  times.  It  is  not  long,  only 
eighty-four  measures  altogether, — yet  how  much  there 
is  in  it !  *"'  An  unmortgaged  country-seat,  with  elves'."^ 
"  Will  you  not  have  the  rest  —  ? "" 
"  Yes,  I  want  the  rest  of  it  at  once,"  urged  Tausig. 
"Sonate  4,  Eflat  major,  Sunday,  Game  of  Skittles. 
Sunßowers  hy  the  howling-alley.  What  fine,  honest 
folk  these  be,  we  find  in  measure  nine  and  the  fol- 
lowing. Rondo  vivace,  modestly  illuminated  garden, 
but  still  — " 

Tausig :   "  But  still  !  How  charmingly  he  accented 
the  idea,  '  beloved  brethren  ! ' ""' 

"Sonate  5,  In  the  theatre.  A  major,  Andante  con 
moto,  theme  from  the  opera  Sylvana,  four-four.'" 
Tausig  :  "  Well  now,  are  you  ready  ?  '*' 
"  Very  !  —  Do  you  know  what  that  is  ?  Weber  must 
have  loved  this  theme ;  he  worked  it  into  variations 
for  solo  clarinet  accompanied  by  almost  solo  piano- 
forte; that  set  is  Op.  33,  in  B  major;  this  set,  in  A, 
is  Op.  10 ;  there  are  more  of  the  clarinet-variations ; 
which  is  the  earlier  work  ? '" 

^'Darüber  streiten  die  Städte''''   [When  doctors   dis- 
[106] 


Carl  Tausig 


agree],  aptly  quoted  Tausig ;  "  according  to  all  good 
methodology,  the  completer  work  is  the  last,  I  think."' 
"Yes,  but  in  our  Op.  10  we  have  this  devilish 
march-variation,  Marcia  Maestoso ;  only  the  most 
finished  master  could  write  that !  The  Finale  sici- 
liano  is  also  charming  ! '''' 

Tausig :  "  This  No.  5  is  really  too  pretty  !  Do  you 
know,  I  have  an  idea !  One  could  arrange  these 
things  as  a  Weber  Fantasia,  for  drawing-room  pur- 
poses. I  shall  do  it  sometime  ! ""  (A  thought  which 
should  be  utilized ;  one  must  love  Weber ;  Rubin- 
stein loved  him  ! ) 

"The   6th   Sonatalet    is    insignificant,    the   closing 
Polonaise  is  weak,  but  there's  a  pretty  violoncello 
solo,  or  would  you  call  it  a  bassoon  ?  "*' 
Tausig :  "  I  should  say  cornet  a  pistons ! ''  So  scher- 
zoso  was  he  ! 

So  we  passed  every  day — unfortunately  but  six  weeks  ! 
Two  years  passed ;  the  news  that,  before  Easter, 
Tausig  was  coming  for  a  concert-season,  raised  the 
greatest  interest  in  the  compact  group  which  formed 
the  musical  contingent  of  St.  Petersburg.  It  was  in 
IVIarch,  1870.  I  went  directly  to  Tausig  in  the  Hotel 
Demuth,  where  he  was  staying.  He  greeted  me 
kindly,  but  I  saw  that  he  was  a  changed  man.  A 
[107] 


Great   Piano   Virtuosos 

cloud  lay  on  his  features ;  he  was  no  longer  cheerful ! 
"You  forgive  me,  as  I  see,"  he  said,  tactfully,  "be- 
cause I  did  not  go  to  you — I  make  no  visits;  I 
leave  the  hotel  only  to  go  to  my  concerts,  and  then 
not  until  everything  is  quite  ready  and  I  can  seat 
myself  at  the  piano,  as  soon  as  I  arrive."^  He  handed 
me  a  cigar.  "They  are  the  same T  he  said,  with  a 
son'owful  smile.  I  talked  directly  of  indifferent  mat- 
ters— it  seemed  the  best  course  to  pursue,  although 
I  was  not  yet  certain  of  the  reason.  He  must  have 
thought  so,  too,  as  he  rose  quickly  and  said :  "  I 
must  play  you  your  Invitation.''''  He  played  only  the 
passage  to  which,  in  his  arrangement  of  the  piece, 
is  added  a  motu  contrario  for  the  left  hand.  I  was 
fairly  astonished  at  this  virtuosity  soaring  freely, 
as  it  were,  into  space,  even  in  a  domain  where  I  felt 
so  thoroughly  at  home  ! — 

"  If  it  amuses  you,"  he  said,  "  I  can  do  it  faster." 
This  time  he  played  the  double  passage  pp,  in  a 
fabulous  prestissimo  tempo,  smiled,  and  rose. 
This  delivery  was  not  natural,  it  was  scnr?-iloiis,  as 
Master  Hoffmann  (Kreissler)  was  wont  to  say.  The 
artist  must  have  been  grieving  !  At  my  request,  how- 
ever, he  played  me  the  entire  piece  with  his  Ara- 
besques (the  distinguishing  title  of  his  arrangement). 
[108] 


Carl  Tausig 


The  Invitatio?!,  one  of  the  most  widely  known 
pieces  of  the  piano-repertory,  was  written  by  Weber 
some  fifty  years  ago,  yet  it  is  still  young  !  I  consider 
it  the  most  significant,  and  the  most  gratifying 
piece  in  rondo-form  without  accompaniment,  that 
we  possess.  This  tender,  yet  so  remarkably  brilliant 
inspiration,  is  meant  for  an  intimate  piano-piece, 
and  finds  its  natural  place  in  the  family  circle  and 
the  drawing-room.  If  it  is  to  appear  before  an 
audience  of  two  thousand  people,  of  course  it  must 
don  ball-attire  and  appear  in  the  full  panoply  of 
the  modem,  Olympic  concert-grand,  an  instrument 
which  reaches  far  beyond  the  possibilities  of  the 
piano  known  to  Weber.  Thus  Tausig  treated  the 
Aufforderung  in  his  variant.  The  rocking  cantilena 
(so  aptly  denoted  by  Weber),  to  which,  in  the  origi- 
nal, the  accompaniment  is  played  in  the  middle  of 
the  piano,  was  placed  by  Tausig  in  the  medium  as  a 
bass  voice  —  that  proper  to  a  dancer  declaring  his 
love  to  his  partner — quite  as  an  a  parte — while  in 
Weber's  aiTangement  this  charming  cantilena  is 
more  representative  of  the  whole  scene. 
To  me,  the  most  artistic  part  of  Tausig's  interpreta- 
tion of  the  Aufforderung  was  the  Minore,  to  which 
he  gave  a  well-nigh  boisterous  efi'ect. 
[109] 


Great  Piano  Virtuosos 

I  told  him  so.  His  answer  was :  "  It  is  pleasant  that 
you  should  praise  my  reading  throughout,  when  all 
your  life  you  have  played  it  differently  !  Shall  you 
write  about  it  ?  '*' 

"  Certainly  !  about  your  Arabesques  in  the  Invita- 
tion, I  will  write  just  what  I  now  tell  you.  Person- 
ally, and  for  the  best  of  reasons,  /  shall  remain  faith- 
ful to  my  Weber  text." 

He  laughed  in  the  old  manner.  "Yes,  it  is  devilish 
hard!  see,  here,  where  the  motus  contrarius  in  the 
passage  touches  minor,  and  yet  the  polished  floor 
of  the  ball-room  must  remain  as  smooth  and  mir- 
ror-like as  ever !  I  have  often  thought  of  you, 
when  I  played  it — but  I  shall  play  it  much  better 
this  evening ;  my  wings  grow  when  I  play  in  public. 
You  will  see.  And  now,  good-bye — and,  like  a  good 
fellow,  don'*t  come  here  again,  for  I  have  become  an 
insupportable  companion  !"  There  was  a  touch  of 
his  old  Berlin  humor  ! 

I  always  go  early  to  concerts  and  opera  on  special 
occasions.  I  like  to  see  the  tribe  of  double-basses 
gradually  stretch  out  their  long  necks;  to  see  the 
wind-players  fumble  in  their  cases ;  to  see  trumpets 
and  kettle-drums  making  ready ;  the  violins  in  con- 
ference !  What  thoughts  arise  the  while  !  There  is 
[110] 


Carl  Tausig 


something  grand  about  an  orchestra!  It  is  the  Doe- 
mos,  whence  everything  proceeds,  and  whither  every- 
thing returns ;  that  is  the  cosmic  idea,  and  the  or- 
chestra is  the  Church  of  Instrumentalism. 
Such  an  important  fraction  of  the  civilized  populace 
should  never  be  invited  to  an  improvised  meal,  but 
only  to  a  symposium ! 

This  time  Beethoven's  Eßat  major  Concerto  was  on 
the  programme — a  worthy  banquet! 
The  fate  that  compels  the  traveller  (for  in  large 
cities  one  always  travels)  brought  me  there  one  hour 
before  the  time.  The  vast  interior  of  the  Hall  of  the 
Nobles  in  St.  Petersburg  (Dvorcenskoje  Sohrank) 
usually  resembles  a  dimly  lighted  crypt,  at  such 
times.  The  hall  itself  was  but  half-lit,  but  already 
completely  filled.  I  had  not  seen  such  a  sight  for 
forty  years!  I  hastened  to  the  artists'  room  in  order 
to  tell  Tausig  about  it;  he  was  not  there,  however, 
and  appeared  at  each  concert  only  just  in  time  to 
play. 

This  hall  has,  for  the  past  forty  years,  been  the 
official  meeting-place  of  the  nobility,  and  is  one  of 
the  most  beautiful — if  not  the  most  beautiful — in 
Europe.  The  roof  is  supported  on  either  side  by 
rows  of  twelve  Corinthian  columns  of  polished  white 

[111] 


Great  Piano  Virtuosos 

stucco,  in  two  stories  (with  gallery);  there  are  three 
pillared  doorways  at  each  end,  through  which  one 
descends  into  the  hall  by  a  few  steps.  Between  the 
pillars  hang  twenty-eight  great  chandeliers;  from 
the  ceiling  hang  eight  more,  of  colossal  size.  Of 
course  the  acoustics,  amid  such  surroundings,  are 
not  all  that  could  be  desired,  but  they  are  good, 
nevertheless.  The  hall  is  frequently  used  for  festivals, 
balls,  and  court  ceremonies.  The  orchestra-platform 
is  built  out  into  the  hall. 

With  this  orchestra  have  appeared  all  the  great  mu- 
sicians of  Europe.  Here:  Franz  Liszt!  Here,  the 
great  singers:  Pasta,  Viardot,  Sontag  (Countess 
Rossi).  Here:  Vieuxtemps,  Ernst,  Sivori,  Ole  Bull. 
Here  sang  Rubini!  Here  took  place  all  the  grand 
functions  of  musical  life  in  St.  Petersburg;  while  the 
two  Counts  Wielhorski  were  leaders  in  taste,  ten- 
dency, and  a  right  appreciation,  by  virtue  of  their 
artistic  superiority — morally,  not  by  force,  and 
hence  with  the  more  enduring  results;  for  these  two 
patrons  and  artists,  unique  in  the  musical  annals  of 
Europe,  never  occupied  an  official  station  in  music. 
Their  followers  were  drawn  to  them  organicaUi/.,  by 
natural  selection. 

Rubinstein,  who  belonged  to  this  great  musical  pe- 
[112] 


Carl  Tausig 


riod,  once  said  to  me:  "In  these  days,  everything  is 
open  to  the  pubHc!" 
"Dat  vhicla  libertas,""'  said  I  to  myself. 
In  any  event,  public  spirit  ought  to  rise  to  that 
level,  which  marked  the  leadership  of  those  eminent 
minds — a  leadership  effective  from  internal  reasons. 
At  Tausig's  concerts  every  seat  in  these  rooms  was 
taken ;  even  the  balcony,  facing  the  Emperor's  box, 
and  belonging  to  the  diplomatic  corps,  was  given  up 
to  the  public.  The  gallery  at  the  capitals  was  a  com- 
pact mass  of  men  and  women;  in  the  entrances,  be- 
tween the  windows  and  the  pillars,  stood  row  upon 
row  of  closely  packed  people,  the  last  row  even 
standing  upon  the  window-ledges ! 
Thus  was  Tausig  received!  In  keeping  with  the 
artist's  modest  manner  of  presenting  himself,  the 
entrance-prices  were  also  modest,  yet,  according  to 
German  rates,  they  were  high.  They  ranged  from 
one  ruble '7  (gallery)  as  high  as  two,  three,  and  five, 
for  the  reserved  seats.  On  the  morning  of  the  first 
concert,  Tausig's  secretary  had  already  sold  three 
thousand  rubles'  worth  of  tickets.  The  gross  pro- 
ceeds amounted  to  double  that  sum,  and  all  three 
concerts  were  equally  thronged.  It  was  the  same  in 
Moscow,  where  all  the  tickets  were  sold  before  the 
[113] 


Great  Piano  Virtuosos 

arrival  of  the  artist.  Yet,  after  his  return  from  Mos- 
cow to  St.  Petersburg,  he  could  not  be  induced  to 
give  one  more  concert. 

Well,  Tausig  appeared  upon  the  platform,  and  seated 
himself  before  the  piano,  which  he  had  brought  from 
Berlin.  He  was  greeted  with  a  storm  of  applause, 
such  as  an  artist  returning  home  after  long  absence, 
might  scarcely  hope  to  receive. 
Now  the  Eßat  major  Concei'to  struck  up ! 
The  artist  was  wholly  oblivious  of  self — I  saw  it 
instantly — that  he  might  fully  recognize  the  sway 
of  his  imperial  mistress,  Art,  in  one  of  her  noblest 
works ! 

His  club-strokes,  meeting  the  onset  of  the  orchestra, 
were  fearful!  These  were  his  answers  to  the  rigoi-s 
of  life,  as  they  affect  the  artistic  soul ! 
Tausig  played  the  Concerto  by  heart,  as  he  played 
all  his  programmes.  He  was  a  rhapsodist,  drunk 
with  the  passion  of  the  immortal  poet !  The  passages 
were  like  toys  in  his  grasp !  I  never  heard  a  more 
fiery,  a  more  manly  exposition  of  the  flame  of  the 
Rondo. 

And  how  uniquely  this  Rondo  rushed  into  the  hall ! 
In  the  delicate  second  theme  Tausig  seemed  to  say: 
"It  is  nothing  to  me  now!  all  is  over!**"* 
[lU] 


Carl  Tausig 


In  the  leaps  in  C  (in  the  modulation)  which  were 
like  electric  sparks,  he  said:  '^This  is  I  !""  It  was  the 
epitome  of  delicacy,  the  most  perfect  elegance.  I 
thought  of  what  he  had  said  in  Berlin:  "That  con- 
certo is  my  specmltyy 

He  played  up  to  that  programme  of  the  work 
which  the  press  {Kölnische  Zeifu?ig'y  1871),  at  the 
time  of  the  secular  celebration  at  Bonn,  expressed 
far  better  than  I  could  do:^^ 

"This  Concerto  is  a  tiTily  noble  tone-poem !  All  it 
requires,  in  order  to  appear  in  the  full  splendor  of 
its  steel  panoply,  is  a  knightly  player, — not  one 
who  would  strip  off  its  armor,  and  take  away  its 
weapons,  to  bring  it  forth  clothed  in  a  silken  jacket 
and  soft  shoes!"  Tausig  was  this  knightly  player  in 
St.  Petersburg,  and  the  place  of  honor  could  scarce 
have  been  wrested  from  him  in  Bonn!  There  he 
would  have  played  pro  Germania ! 
His  solo  playing  in  St.  Petersburg  extended  over  the 
entire  repertoire:  from  Bach  and  Scarlatti  to  Mo- 
zart and  Beethoven;  from  Field  to  Chopin;  through 
Weber  and  Schumann,  to  Liszt.  All  styles  were 
simple,  to  him;  he  united  in  himself  the  character- 
istics of  the  most  diverse  natures  ! 
Let  us  sum  up  the  attributes  of  the  artist  now  torn 
[115] 


Great  Piano   Virtuosos 

from  our  midst:  His  command  of  all  musical  re- 
sources was  so  great,  that  in  this  command  resided 
the  poetiy  of  a  conqueror  holding  sovereign  sway 
over  material  and  machinery, — a  poetry  peculiar 
and  apart.  His  talent  for  the  strict  style  (fugue,  the 
imitative  style)  was  unique.  He  played  fugues,  and 
the  like,  with  the  charm  of  the  most  charming  treat- 
ment of  the  free  style ;  as  was  once  said  of  him :  His 
neatness  in  every  part,  the  nuances  of  his  touch, 
made  this  domain  popular,  generally  intelligible, 
universally  interesting.  In  the  fugue  we  confront 
the  letter,  into  which  we  are  to  breathe  the  spirit  of 
Art,  not  a  subjective  personality;  an  artistic  sub- 
jectivity, in  a  narrow  sense.  Tausig  possessed,  in 
a  high  degree,  the  power  of  subordinating  his  own 
nature  to  the  necessity  of  his  art,  so  that  in  the 
fugue  he  was  peculiarly  at  home.  He  commanded 
the  entire  arsenal  of  the  utmost  possibilities  of  the 
piano  as  expressed  in  the  compositions  of  Liszt,  and 
was  a  finished  interpreter  of  Chopin. 
In  a  word,  he  was  one  of  the  most  prominent  vir- 
tuosos the  world  has  ever  known,  an  infaillibler  tri- 
umphator  at  the  piano. 

Have,  anima  pia!  Te!  amicissimum  sodalem 

moriturus  salutat! 

[116] 


Adolph    Henselt 


Erlösung  der  Sinnlich- 
keit   durch  das   Ideal 


Adolph     Henselt 

yA  RTHUR  SCHOPENHAUER,  who  appre- 
/  %  hends  the  world,  in  his  philosophy,  as  Will 
-^  -^  and  Conception,  once  said :  "  The  greatest 
good  fortune  is  never  to  have  been  born/' 
Never  to  have  ^\Titten  may  also  be  regarded  as  a 
fairly  acceptable  piece  of  good  fortune  !  The  diffi- 
culty of  >\Titing  is,  that  you  must  not  only  talk — 
you  must  say  something;  by  writing  you  always 
make  more  enemies  than  friends,  and  your  gain  is 
but  a  symbol ! 

In  the  Berliner  MimJczeitung-,  Nos.  37-39,  1868, 
appeared  a  series  of  articles  comprising  Liszt,  Cho- 
pin, and  Tausig,  and  holding  out  a  promise  of  a 
continuation,  more  especially  because  a  halt  was 
made  before  the  most  unique  phenomenon  of  this 
century  on  the  keyboard — Adolph  Henselt.  If  we 
speak  of  Henselt  as  the  most  unique  phenomenon 
on  the  keyboard,  we  now  have  to  justify  this  desig- 
nation by  means  of  internal  evidence. 
In  absolute  power  over  ever?/  resource  of  the  piano, 
and,  therefore,  over  evert/  style,  Liszt  is  to  be  under- 
stood as  cosmic — i.  e.,  universal.  Tausig,  who  treated 
the  apparatus,  the  medium,  as  an  art  in  itself,  leaned 
[119] 


Great  Piano  Virtuosos 

thereby  more  towards  universality,  than  individual- 
ity. Chopin  was  too  individual  in  production,  to  be 
able  to  express  his  entire  individuality  in  reproduc- 
tion, as  an  artist  deficient  in  physical  command  of 
the  medium.  We  say,  his  entire  individuality ;  for  in 
details  of  intei-pretation,  in  a  natural  elegance  all 
his  own — springing  from  feeling,  not  artificial — in 
the  taste  and  fervency  of  all  his  conceptions,  the 
pianist  Chopin  likewise  discovered  incomparable 
individuality  of  its  kind, — a  Polish  (Sarmatian) 
individuality  with  French  breeding,  French  man- 
ners, with  the  advantages  and  disadvantages  of  both 
nationalities. 

By  reason  of  his  lack  of  physical  power,  he  com- 
posed everything  in  song-style;  every  detail  of  his 
work  conforms  to  this  style — in  this  art  he  was  a 
pastel-painter,  ''wie  noch  Keiner  wary  His  Ma- 
zurkas are  the  journal  of  his  spiritual  journeys  into 
the  socio-political  domain  of  the  Sarmatian  dream- 
world \  There  his  powers  of  reproduction  were  at 
home,  there  dwelt  the  individuality  of  Chopin  the 
pianist.  He  represented  his  dream-land,  Poland,  in 
the  Parisian  salons,  and  even  dared,  in  the  time  of 
Louis  Philippe,  to  predict  for  his  beloved  country 
a  far-reaching  political  independence.  Chopin  was 
[  120  ] 


Adolph  Henselt 


the  only  political  pianist.  He  interpreted  Poland,  he 
composed  Poland  ! 

French  life,  the  French  schools  of  Art  and  Science 
in  general,  were  not  altogether  without  influence  on 
Franz  Liszt.  This  was  shown  at  the  time  bj  the 
fact,  that  this  great  apparition  at  the  pianoforte, 
the  greatest  phenomenon  ever  known  on  the  piano- 
forte,— that  Liszt  placed  in  the  front  rank  the 
attainments  of  a  mechanical  skill  not  wholly  free 
from  a  certain  stereotyped  formalism — French  pre- 
cision acting  along  conventional  lines — and  brought 
its  influence  to  bear  on  conventionalism  and  on  all 
things  "that  the  Fashion  sternly  parts,''  as  the 
poet  ^9  has  it.  His  style  was  at  that  time  sufficient 
unto  itself,  much  as  the  French  language  is  self- 
sufficing.  The  artist's  genius,  his  "immortal  part," 
freed  him  from  French  influences,  and  drew  him 
ever  closer  to  Germany,  the  collective  fatherland  of 
musical  ai't — an  advantage  which  obtained  for  him 
equal  mastery  over  all  other  styles ;  by  means  of 
German  intellect,  from  German  depth,  Ger'man  know- 
ledge and  power,  to  enter  at  will  into  the  soul-hfe 
of  France  and  Italy. 

Midway  between  Liszt  and  Chopin  —  in  a  ivay,  the 

connecting-link  between  their  contrasting  natures — 

[  121  ] 


Great   Piano   Virtuosos 

stands  Henselt,  a  primitive  German  phenomenon,  a 
Germania  at  the  piano.  Henselt  is  German  in  eveiy- 
thing,  in  production  and  in  reproduction.  German 
is,  for  us,  synonymous  with  faithful,  honest,  real ! 
All  that  is  true  and  upright  in  the  world,  all  that 
lies  deep,  all  the  deepest  and  noblest  qualities  which 
live  in  the  human  breast,  may  safely  be  called  Ger- 
man !  But  Henselt  is  not  only  German,  he  is,  in  the 
best  and  broadest  sense  of  the  term,  student -German ; 
in  his  indestructible  youthfulness  of  spirit,  in  his 
entire  exemption  from  social  and  conventional  con- 
straint, both  in  art  and  life,  in  his  Utopian  views  of 
life — the  reality  of  which  exists  in  the  ideal !  Stu- 
dent-life is  a  German  institution  which  —  like  a 
happy  island  in  the  midst  of  the  sea  of  ordinary 
society — symbolizes  the  youth  of  the  world  (Juven- 
tus mundi)^  as  Gladstone  said  of  Greece  !  This  element 
is  a  token  of  true  German  feeling,  and  on  these 
grounds  we  make  an  analogous  application  to  Hen- 
selt. 

Therefore,  when  we  say  that,  against  Liszt  and  Cho- 
pin, Henselt  stands  out  as  a  student-German  phe- 
nomenon "such  as  never  was  before,""  we  obtain 
another  key  to  a  better  understanding  of  his  man- 
ner. Our  aim  is  to  discriminate,  to  characterize. 
[  122  ] 


Adolph   Henselt 


Commonplaces  of  acknowledgment,  —  qualifications 
fitting  similar  phenomena,  will  not  do ;  for  by  such 
means  neither  characteristic  traits  nor  well-grounded 
comprehension  can  be  realized ;  and  these  alone  are 
available  for  criticism,  because  they  establish  facts. 
In  order  to  solve  our  problem  we  had  to  determine 
upon  a  standpoint  from  which  to  view  Henselt. 
We  found  the  Gervianic  standpoint.  We  shall,  there- 
fore, first  submit  a  small,  general  portion  of  our 
observations ;  then  describe  the  great  artist  by  de- 
scriptions of  some  of  his  compositions  (as  with 
Weber  and  Chopin) ;  and  close  with  a  sketch  of  the 
artist  as  a  man.  For  the  life  of  an  artist  is  a  totality 
which  he  can  abandon  only  in  episodes,  and  to  which 
his  best  impulses  must  ever  be  time — if  he  be  a 
genuine  artist. 

For  the  past  thirty-two  yeai-s  ^°  Henselt  has  lived  in 
St.  Petersburg,  where  he  never  appears  in  public. 
Twice  eveiy  year  he  visits  Germany,  but  even  there 
he  is  heard  only  by  a  chosen  few.  Therefore  it  may 
be  agreeable  to  German  readers  to  hear  about  an 
artist  who  belongs  to  the  artistic  fame  of  the  Ger- 
man fatherland  in  such  a  high  degree,  that  if  one 
dared  calculate  and  classify,  one  might  name  Hen- 
selt as  the  only  artist  among  the  great  pianists  who 
[  123  ] 


Great  Piano   Virtuosos 

is  Liszt's  equal — although  in  the  specifically  sub- 
jective domain  he  belongs  to  a  more  specialized 
sphere.  Henselt  alone  has,  first  of  all,  the  same 
command  over  the  resources,  in  fullness  of  tone  and 
the  same  finish  of  execution;  this  execution  is  un- 
approachable— above  all  comparison  (omjii  excep- 
tione  major).  We  do  not  care  for  comparisons,  how- 
ever, but  will  criticise  each  of  these  phenomena 
apart,  upon  its  own  ground. 

In  his  creation,  in  his  style,  in  his  entire  personal- 
ity Henselt  is  German,  thoroughly  German,  without 
general  polish.  He  has  his  ow^n  peculiar  polish,  his 
own  peculiar  finish;  he  is  a  law  and  an  end  unto 
himself.  By  this  law  he  departs  from  the  good  old 
school,  but  arrives  at  very  individual  results.  He 
was  once  a  pupil  of  Hummel — that  is,  if  one  can 
speak  of  him  as  being  any  one's  pupil!  However, 
every  one  must  begin,  therefore  it  is  necessary  to 
mention  that  the  foundation  of  Henselt's  execution 
is  a  very  solid  one.  We  should  call  it  classic,  had  not 
the  term  been  so  stupidly  misused,  were  it  not 
odious  to  us,  and  did  we  not  rather  confine  its  appli- 
cation to  the  Greek  and  Roman  authors  according  as 
one  or  the  other  treats  his  mother-tongue  well  or  ill. 
We  shall  call  Henselfs  mode  of  expression,  taken  as 
[  124  ] 


Adolph  Henselt 


a  whole,  romantic — in  feeling  and  spirit  like  Weber, 
whom  he  much  resembles  in  disposition.  Romanti- 
cism is  a  distinctly  German  propensity  which  is 
most  prominently  developed  in  Henselt.  Even  when 
the  artist  develops  a  lighter  vein,  proffers  a  modest 
drawing-room  piece  (Liebeslied,  Fontaine),  and  the 
ordinary  listener  discerns  sentimentality,  refined 
sensibility — there  too,  and  in  the  smallest  possible 
compass,  is  Henselt  romantic  in  the  same  sense  in 
which  Weber  is  romantic  in  Der  Freischütz,  where 
even  Annchens  simple  songs  are  flooded  with 
moonlight  for  every  one  that  has  taste  to  appreciate 
them. 

In  his  outward  appearance  the  artist  is  also  specifi- 
cally German;  in  his  dignified,  simple  carriage,  in 
his  self-poised  manner  combined  with  the  sincerest 
modesty,  because  he  never  is  or  will  be  satisfied  with 
his  achievement — a  fact  which  the  keen  observer 
easily  recognizes,  and  only  the  \Tilgar  misjudges. 
Henselt  pursues  an  ideal  of  perfection,  which  never 
permits  him  a  moment  of  unalloyed  delight.  Hence 
it  comes  that  Henselt  is  the  only  artist  to  exhibit 
the  phenomenon — remarkable,  indeed,  but  grounded 
in  his  innermost  nature — that  immediately  on  fin- 
ishing a  given  piece  or  movement,  to  the  utmost 
[125] 


Great  Piano  Virtuosos 

astonishment  and  rapture  of  his  chosen  audience,  he 
would  play  it  over,  and  even  over  again,  as  though 
at  the  command  of  some  higher  power,  quite  uncon- 
scious of  his  surroundings!  These  were  moments  of 
supreme  ecstasy,  of  entire  isolation  from  the  outer 
world — in  which  the  man  is  no  longer  master  of 
himself,  in  which  the  artistic  soul  alone  is  active; 
moments  in  which  the  artist  approaches  nearer  to 
his  ideal,  which  he  longs  with  such  passionate  yearn- 
ing to  reach  that  the  outer  world,  his  own  self,  and 
the  impression  made  upon  his  auditors,  are  quite 
forgotten !  Had  he,  at  such  moments,  had  a  suspicion 
of  any  audience,  he  would  gladly  have  had  them 
thrown  out  of  the  window !  Such  is  the  result  of  my 
observations  of  the  past  thirty-two  years ! 
Such  unconscious,  rhapsodic  reprises  of  this  kind 
usually  ran  on  in  accelerated  motion,  with  modifica- 
tions of  form,  in  a  concentration  of  expression  upon 
some  darling  passage  which  was  to  him  hh  Rezia, 
his  Agatha,  to  whom,  over  hill  and  dale,  through 
fire  and  water,  he  works  his  way,  that  with  his  be- 
loved he  may  sacrifice  himself  upon  the  altar  of  the 
purest  enthusiasm!  One  does  not  experience  mere 
enjoyment  in  hearing  Henselt,  one  is  intoxicated 
and  elevated  at  the  same  moment.  Another  dis- 
[126  1 


Adolph   Henselt 


tinctive  trait  in  Henselt  is  that,  in  the  midst  of 
compositions — wherever  his  enthusiasm  seizes  him, 
when  he  soars  towards  his  ideal,  he  doubles  the 
singing  melody  that  quite  fills  his  heart,  by  hum- 
ming it  himself!  The  artist's  voice  is  anything  but 
lovely,  and  injures  the  effect,  as  he  knows  right  well 
when  he  is  told  that  he  has  been  singing  again;  for 
he  himself  does  not  know  it,  or  suspect  it!  Never ^ 
never  have  I  heard  such  a  magical  cantilena  flow 
from  the  pianoforte,  as  in  those  moments  when 
Henselt's  voice  joined  his  playing!  But  even  then 
he  is  never  satisfied,  he  was  never  happy  for  even 
a  moment.  Never  does  Henselt  say,  or  feel,  or  think, 
with  the  romantic  poet : 

AUe  Wünsche,  alle  Träume 

Waren  herrlich  mm  gestlUt! 

Das  Verlangen  war  erfüllt. 

Fj-'öhlich  rauschten  grüne  Bäume!  * 
Henselt  first  appeared  in  St.  Petersbui-g  in  the  con- 
cert-season of  1838,  and  since  then  has  left  us  only 
occasionally.  I  happened  to  be  at  Count  Wielhor- 
ski's  when  Henselt  first  called  there.  I  shall  never 
forget  the  extraordinary  impression  he  made  by  the 
interpretation  of  his  F  sharp  Major  Etude.  It  was 
*  Kaiser  Oktavianus. 

[127] 


Great   Piano  Virtuosos 

like  an  ^^olian  harp  hidden  beneath  garlands  of 
sweetest  flowers!  An  intoxicating  perfume  was 
crushed  from  the  blossoms  under  his  hands — soft, 
like  falling  rose-leaves,  the  alternating  sixths,  which, 
in  one  and  the  same  octave,  pursued,  teazed,  em- 
braced, and  enraptured !  Such  a  charm  of  rich  fullness 
of  tone  in  pianissimo  had  never  before  been  heard 
on  the  piano!  After  the  delicate  whisper  in  the 
principal  theme,  the  Minore  entered  energetically, 
mounting  from  one  degree  of  power  to  another, 
taking  the  instrument  by  storm — to  lose  itself 
again  in  a  magic  dialogue  in  sixths!  Thirty-two 
years  have  passed  since  then,  but  the  enchanting 
picture  still  lives  before  the  inner  eye. 
Henselt  must  have  perceived  how  enraptured  we 
were  with  his  performance,  for  as  soon  as  he  had 
finished  the  piece,  he  commenced  again  at  the  most 
touching  part  of  his  poem,  and  played  it  through 
once  again,  with  modified  gradations  of  expression. 
It  was  like  gleaning  after  a  harvest  of  joy!  He 
must  have  been  satisfied  with  himself,  and  have 
rejoiced  to  read  his  instant  triumph  in  the  eyes  of 
connoisseurs  of  such  high  standing  as  the  Counts 
Wielhorski. 

In    quite   a   different    style,    flowing   more    quietly, 
[128] 


Adolph  Henselt 


broadly,  and  deeply,  followed  his  Poeme  cTamour  in 
B  major,  which,  passing  over  from  an  unquestion- 
ably new  nocturne-style,  changes  to  a  not  less  deeply 
felt  allegro  in  variation -style,  and  closes  with  the 
highest  degree  of  bravura  in  arpeggios  which  cov- 
ered the  whole  extent  of  the  instrument  —  and 
which  he  hurled  like  heavy,  well-aimed  spears — 
without  exceeding  the  limits  of  euphony,  without 
once  overstepping  the  measure  of  power  allowed  to 
the  piano. 

Such  playing  had  never  been  heard  !  Such  tenderness 
allied  to  so  much  force ;  a  depth  of  meaning  so  suffi- 
cient to  itself,  with  all  its  euphemistic  concessions 
to  the  audience,  was  an  artistic  feat,  a  phenomenon, 
wholly  unique. 

The  success  of  the  concert  given  at  the  big  theatre 
by  Henselt,  was  so  extraordinary,  the  result  so 
great,  towering  above  everything  of  the  kind  which 
had  been  known  abroad,  the  victory  over  the  old 
world  of  the  piano  so  indisputable — that  the  artist 
acceded  to  the  out-spoken  wishes  of  the  public,  and 
brought  his  Penates  from  Germany  to  St.  Petersburg. 
Henselt's  coming  to  us  marked  the  obsolescence  of 
the  Hummel-Field  school,  and  brought  the  piano 
into  quite  another  channel.  A  deep  shadow  fell  over 
[  129  ] 


Great  Piano  Virtuosos 

the  old  literature,  which  was  represented  in  St. 
Petersburg  by  Charles  Mayer,^^  who  in  his  way  was 
a  finished,  swift-fingered,  smooth,  but  very  dry 
pianiste-compositeur — and  by  Reinhardt,  who  had 
studied  with  Field  in  Moscow,  but  resembled  his 
master  only  in  the  outward  part  of  piano  ornamen- 
tation, not  in  the  spirit  of  his  interpretations.  Mayer 
himself  swore  by  Field,  and  posed  as  his  best  pupil ; 
both  these  musicians  understood  little  of  Beethoven, 
nothing  at  all  of  Weber.  Mayer  had  had  the  pre- 
sumption to  go  over  to  Hummel,  whose  compositions 
passed  for  the  highest  kind  of  piano-music,  in  the 
twenties  and  thirties !  Now,  Hummel  was  but  a 
starting-point  for  Henselt,  through  whose  compo- 
sitions, aside  from  their  unparalleled  interpretation 
by  the  author,  a  new  era  began :  the  era  of  lyric 
personality,  subjective  dramatic  intention,  plastic 
execution,  bearing  internal  evidence  of  a  real  human 
right  to  be.  This  tendency,  this  new  ^oZow-literature, 
had  its  origin  in  the  good  old  school  and  belonged, 
from  a  technical  standpoint,  to  a  straight  guild; 
now,  however,  it  had  nothing  more  to  do  with 
schools  and  pedants,  with  pattern  and  routine,  but 
turned  its  doctrinary  ideas  to  account  for  humanity, 
in  audience  and  adepts. 

[130] 


Adoloh   Henselt 


Henselfs  compositions  seek  to  express  emotion,  and 
not  speculative  musical  ideas ;  wherefore  they  should 
not  be  judged  merely  from  reading,  but  must  be 
played,  or  heard. 

The  abstract  idea  so  powerful  in  Schumann,  for 
example,  is  foreign  to  Henselt ;  but  nowhere  in  his 
compositions  do  we  find  the  voids  which,  in  Hum- 
mel, hide  behind  passages  and  endless  tinklings. 
Henselt  paints  pictures  of  deep  feeling  within  small 
frames,  and  his  mastery  of  the  medium  enables  him 
—  through  polyphony  in  composition,  through  posi- 
tions, stretches,  and  turning  to  account  eveiy  possi- 
bility of  the  piano,  to  give  interest  to  compositions 
in  which  the  original  idea  was  of  slight  value.  It  is 
the  most  fruitful  treatment  of  the  piano,  beyond 
which  Liszt  and  Chopin  were  able  to  pass  only  in 
details,  not  in  essentials.  It  is,  rather,  the  same  do- 
main occupied  by  the  Olympian  piano  of  our  day, 
which  dominates  publicity,  influences  privacy,  and 
cannot  well  lend  itself  to  simplified  expression ;  for 
such  simplicity,  to  receive  vitality  of  form,  must  be 
paired  with  a  proportionally  greater  and  more  prim- 
itive creative  gift — one  on  a  par  with  the  gi-eatest 
masters  of  composition,  ay  !  overpassing  them,  after 
the  delirious  revel  of  our  days  in  outward  effect !  In 
[  13l'] 


Great  Piano  Virtuosos 

these  days  we  seem  to  rely  more  upon  form  and  out- 
ward appearance  than  on  the  deep  musical  produc- 
tion— the  idea. 

Time  is  generally  the  most  righteous  judge  of  worth. 
Henselt's  compositions  have  held  their  own  in  the 
piano-repertory  for  forty  years.  That  is  saying  a 
great  deal;  that  is  a  proof  that  they  embody  living 
thought  which  must  survive  fashion  and  the  influ- 
ence of  the  auspicious  moment — that  they  are,  in 
a  word,  vital  thoughts — which  cannot  be  said  of 
many  of  their  contemporaries.  It  is  not  merely  the 
fundamental  expression  of  love-yearning,  tempered 
by  strong  dash  of  romanticism,  in  Henselt's  compo- 
sitions, but,  no  whit  less,  their  tragi -dramatic  aim, 
which  gives  them  value  and  importance.  In  the 
jfitudes  Eroica  and  Dankgebet  nach  Stu?'m,  there  is 
an  amount  of  energy,  earnestness,  and  a  dramatic 
note,  which,  before  his  time,  were  not  to  be  found 
on  the  piano.  Henselt  is,  altogether,  a  phenomenon 
unexcelled  by  any  other  of  our  day;  a  phenomenon, 
in  its  place  and  period,  of  equal  rank  with  Liszt,  i.e., 
overmastering,  epoch-making  in  art.  Henselt  is  not 
a  music-spirit  pure  and  simple,  apart  from  the  piano- 
forte; he  is  a  spirit  of  pia?io-mus\c — belonging 
essentially  to  the  piano  and  indissolubly  bound  to 
[  132  ] 


Adolph   Henselt 


it.  Hence  it  is  that  Weber  and  Henselt  are  so  much 
alike  in  spirit — that  Weber  is  so  much  more  sym- 
pathetic to  the  artist  than  Beethoven.  Weber  lives 
in  the  region  of  loving  human  souls,  Beethoven's 
influence  over  the  world  is  through  the  strength  and 
power  of  speculative  thought!  These  two  aims  are 
not  opposed,  they  nin  parallel;  they  do  not  inter- 
fere with  one  another,  they  divide  the  world  be- 
tween them.  Of  Beethoven's  three  first  piano-trios 
(Op.  1)  Henselt  said  in  his  pithy  way:  "They  ^^ze;, 
the  later  ones  were  made;"  and  the  same,  in  a 
higher  degree,  he  thought  of  the  great  thinker's 
solo  sonatas,  which  form  a  cult  by  themselves,  as 
every  one  knows. 

I  know  that  I  lay  myself  open  to  contradiction  here 
— it  might  be  war  to  the  knife,  but  for  the  fact 
that  I  shall  never  venture  to  argue  with  Henselt !  His 
obstinacy  and  tenacity  are  too  strong — he  would 
never  yield!  He  sits  walled  in  by  his  own  convic- 
tions, walled  in  \vith  the  precepts  of  his  good  old 
school — even  though  these  precepts  are  no  longer 
impregnable,  or  enlightened  by  the  general  latter- 
day  art-philosophy.  But  one  example  is  worth  men- 
tioning. Beethoven,  in  the  finale  of  the  Choral  sym- 
phony, uses  the  chord  of  the  seventh  on  ^  in  D 
[  133  ] 


Great  Piano  Virtuosos 

minor,  with  the  minor  ninth  (b),  and  the  full  dom- 
inant harmony  (a,  c  sharp ^  f,  g)^  whereby  the  en- 
tire diatonic  minor  scale  of  D  is  heard  at  once.  At 
a  dinner  in  St.  Petersburg,  which  Henselt  gave  in 
honor  of  Berlioz,  the  latter  spoke  of  this  chord  as 
a  "monster''  which  he  could  not  understand.  Hen- 
selt rose  from  the  table,  opened  a  piano  and  seated 
himself — not  without  some  irritation — on  the  keys, 
with  the  words:  "It  sounds  something  like  this!""^* 
Henselt  says  that  Bach  can  never  gi'ow  old — and 
that  is  very  true;  but  the  reason  lies  in  the  nature 
of  the  fugue  as  a  conventional  form,  not  in  the  su- 
periority of  the  thought.  Such  a  study  of  Bach  as 
Henselt  made,  every  day  of  his  life,  has  never  before 
been  heard  of !  He  played  the  fugues  most  diligently 
on  a  piano  so  muffled  with  feather  quills  that  the 
only  sound  heard  was  the  dry  beat  of  the  hammers 
against  the  muffled  strings;  it  was  like  the  bones  of 
a  skeleton  rattled  by  the  wind !  In  this  manner  the 
artist  spared  his  ears  and  his  nerves,  for  he  reads,  at 
the  same  time,  on  the  music-rack,  a  very  thick,  good 
book — the  Bible — truly  the  most  appropriate  com- 
panion for  Bach.  After  he  has  played  Bach  and  the 
Bible  quite  through,  he  begins  over  again.  The  few 
people  whom  Henselt  allows  to  approach  him  in 
[  134  ] 


Adolph  Henselt 


those  late  hallowed  evening  hours,  he  requests  to 
continue  their  conversation, — that  does  not  disturb 
him  in  the  least ; — but  the  rattle  of  the  skeleton  in 
the  piano  disturbs  them^  and  tortures  their  nerves 
instead  of  quieting  them.  Seated  at  a  dumb  piano 
with  Bach  and  the  Bible  for  company,  the  composer 
of  many  love-songs,  of  the  Poeme  cTamour^  the  most 
keen-eared  tone-reveller  among  virtuosi,  earned  his 
daily  artistic  bread!  One  might  meditate  much  on 
this;  it  is  a  long  leap — a  salto  mortale — from  the 
Prophets  to  Theocritus  and  Tibullus ! 
Such  a  strange  phenomenon  is  this  artist! — and  in 
these  traits,  to  which  much  might  be  added,  he  is, 
so  to  speak,  a  second  Faust -Wagner :  "In  truth  I 
know  much,  but  I  would  know  all,"  without  contra- 
dicting his  genuine  artist-nature,  but  confirming  it 
in  genuine  German  fashion. 

The  effect  Henselt  produced  in  St.  Petersburg  was 
so  great,  that  he  became  all  at  once  the  all-engross- 
ing topic  of  conversation  at  the  pianoforte ;  he 
concentrated,  in  his  own  person,  the  function  of 
instructor  in  all  the  most  influential  circles  and  at 
Court,  where  the  Empress  immediately  appointed 
him  Court  Pianist.  He  kept  open  house,  gave  no 
more  concerts,  and  limited  his  consuming  activity 
[135] 


Great   Piano   Virtuosos 

to  composition  and  to  teaching  —  his  lessons  he 
managed  with  almost  unheard-of  punctuality  and 
energy. 

His  Piano  Concerto  in  F  minor  dates  from  this  time ; 
we  should  call  it  the  last  possible  three-part  Con- 
certo;— also  his  Trio  in  A  minor,  which,  by  reason 
of  the  contemporary  movement,  stands  in  the  con- 
stellation of  Mendelssohn. 

In  order  to  hear  Henselt,  one  had  either  to  become 
his  pupil,  which  was  not  easy,  or  to  belong  to  his 
circle  of  intimate  acquaintances — which  was  still 
more  difficult.  To  the  latter  he  played,  as  he  said, 
on  Sunday  mornings  in  winter  for  several  hours, 
occasions  of  most  solemn  gatherings  of  the  faithful. 
These  matinees  at  Henselfs,  as  they  were  called, 
were  most  extraordinary ;  the  artist  played  one  piece 
after  another  without  halt  or  rest, — often  without 
any  interruption.  He  thought  little  about  his  audi- 
ence, unless  the  foremost  beauties  of  the  city  hap- 
pened to  be  present.  He  appeared  to  regard  the 
performance  in  the  light  of  exercises  of  a  loftier 
scope — coram  populo — for  he  was  always  playing 
exercises ;  for  yeai's  he  always  had  a  dumb  piano  on 
his  knees,  on  which  he  uninterruptedly  punished  his 
fingers,  in  company  or  by  himself — for  instance,  at 
[136] 


Adolph  Henselt 


his  concerts  between  each  two  numbers.  I  shall 
never  forget  how — a  few  minutes  after  one  of  his 
most  brilliant  triumphs  at  a  concert  in  the  Hall  of 
the  Nobility — I  went  to  the  artists'*  room  with 
Count  Wielhorski  to  speak  with  Henselt,  and  found 
him,  suiTounded  by  the  flood-tide  of  a  concert- 
evening,  busy  with  his  dumb  piano !  There  was 
something  in  this  of  Hoffmann's  Kreissler  —  it 
was  the  artist's  confession  of  faith,  his  way  of  giving 
himself  up  entirely  to  his  art,  to  the  exclusion  of 
every  other  interest.  I  have  often  regretted  it  for 
his  sake,  but  have  always  understood  it  as  a  rare 
Jaithfulness  to  conviction,  as  an  exaggeration  of  the 
sense  of  duty  to  his  life-work  for  art, — as  a  proof 
of  endurance  and  strength  of  character  such  as  is 
peculiar  only  to  the  Germanic  nature.  This  was  not 
understood  by  every  one,  however — this  longing  of 
Henselfs  to  gi-asp  with  his  hands  the  ever-receding 
horizon  of  ideal  perfection  ! 

Not  less  significant  of  his  character  is  the  fact  that 
the  mere  thought  of  giving  a  concert  makes  him  ill ; 
after  his  first  appearance,  no  amount  of  persuasion 
WEIS  sufficient  to  induce  him  to  give  another  concert 
— in  thirty-three  years  he  gave  but  three  !  And  a 
speculator  offered  to  pay  him  in  advance  the  highest 
[137] 


Great   Piano   Virtuosos 

price  he  could  reasonably  demand  if  without  any 
further  trouble  he  would  only  sit  down  at  the  piano 
and  play,  the  speculator  taking  whatever  remained 
of  the  receipts  over  and  above  the  price  which  he 
should  see  fit  to  demand; — but  Henselt  absolutely 
refused. 

It  is  quite  as  impossible  to  induce  him  to  attend  a 
concert  given  by  another,  or  the  opera ;  he  devotes 
himself  entirely  to  his  art,  to  his  scholars,  to  the 
Court,  to  Bach  and  the  Bible.  Before  Bach  comes, 
however,  he  still  pursues  his  course  of  bodily  health- 
gymnastics  every  evening;  forcing,  in  the  sweat 
of  his  brow,  and  in  spite  of  every  fatigue  and  all 
opposition,  his  hands  and  feet  to  perform  all  sorts 
of  difficult  evolutions  on  a  horizontal  bar !  He  had 
once  got  a  notion  that  it  was  beneficial,  and  Henselt 
never  changes  his  opinion.  These  gymnastics  of  his 
have  a  not  uninteresting  point  of  departure. 
In  the  days  of  Emperor  Nicholas  hygienic  gymnas- 
tics came  into  fashion  through  the  performances  of 
a  Swedish  gymnast  whose  influence  reached  the 
highest  social  circles.  For  several  winters  the  Em- 
peror visited,  early  each  morning,  the  maiiege  in  the 
palace  of  the  Prince  of  Oldenburg,  where  he,  in  com- 
pany with  the  Grand  Duke,  the  Prince,  and  the 
[138] 


Adolph  Henselt 


Duke  of  Leuchtenberg,  practised  gymnastics.  In  this 
Henselt,  as  a  friend  of  royalty,  took  pai*t.  Many 
yeai-s  have  passed  since  then,  and  of  all  who  met 
there  Henselt  alone  continues  the  exercises — a  strik- 
ing example  of  the  persistence  of  the  German  nature. 
For  the  same  hygienic  reasons,  the  artist  walks  end- 
less distances  every  day  in  St.  Petersburg,  sometimes 
letting  his  carriage  accompany  him,  but  oftener  pre- 
ferring to  do  without  it. 

Henselt  is  General  Inspector  of  the  music-classes 
in  the  royal  educational  institutions  in  St.  Peters- 
burg and  Moscow  which  are  under  the  management 
of  the  Prince  of  Oldenburg.  In  dark  winter  even- 
ings Henselt  walks  quite  alone  from  the  Smolna 
Monastery — one  of  the  largest — through  a  pecu- 
liarly lonely  part  of  the  town  back  to  his  own  house. 
No  remonstrance  has  any  effect.  We  told  him  he 
might  be  waylaid.  "  That  would  not  be  easy,""  was 
his  only  answer.  "  I  am  agile,  I  do  gymnastics — and 
I  have  this  life-preserver ! "  pointing  to  his  stick. 
So  it  will  always  be ;  for  a  yielding  Henselt,  at  any 
age,  is  unimaginable. — In  those  institutions  Henselt 
teaches  whole  generations  of  well-trained  instruc- 
tresses, thus  assuring  generations  a  respectable  live- 
lihood for  which  they  have  not  ceased  to  be  grateful. 
[139] 


Great   Piano  Virtuosos 

Henselt's  great  Etudes  are  to  be  considered  as 
poems,  "Songs  without  Words,"'  and  he  would  surely 
have  named  them  so  had  this  title,  brought  into 
vogue  by  Mendelssohn,  not  already  appeared.  The 
expression  Etude  is  not  in  this  case  to  be  understood 
— as  are  Cramer's — in  the  sense  of  exercises  for 
piano-ins ti-uction.  Everything  in  life  is  study ^  prac- 
tice; we  shall  never  reach  the  end  of  practising  and 
learning !  But  these  inspirations  [Henselt's  Etudes] 
assume  previously  finished  study;  they  are  of  the 
first  rank  in  the  mass  of  literature  which  has  ap- 
peared under  the  title  of  Etudes,  in  which  Chopin 
culminates. 

Henselfs  ifitudes  are  not  inferior  to  those  of  Chopin, 
but  present  an  essentially  different  emotional  realm; 
they  move  in  a  different  social  sphere,  with  different 
forms  of  intercourse.  If  we  seek  to  comprehend  these 
differences,  we  shall  fathom  the  character  of  both 
artist-natures  and  shall  discover  another  criterion 
for  a  proper  estimate  of  Henselt. 
Henselt,  in  common  with  Chopin,  acts  with  direct 
effect ;  the  effect  which  speculative  musical  thought 
does  not  need,  and  which  is  most  effective  on  the 
piano.  He  shares  with  Chopin  the  peculiarity  of 
directing  the  whole  power  of  the  apparatus  to  the 
[  140  ] 


Adolph  Henselt 


sense  of  hearing.  Henselt  differs  from  Chopin  as  the 
former  higher  French  society,  as  the  salon,  in  a 
word,  diffei-s  from  German  society  and  civiHzation. 
During  the  past  few  years  Paris  has  become  alto- 
gether demoralized,  becoming  a  sort  of  robber-ro- 
mance. As  early  as  the  days  of  Louis  Philippe,  the 
scene  of  Dumas"*  novels  was  laid  in  Paris.  The  Pa- 
risian salon  of  yore  exists  now  only  in  the  literature 
of  the  time,  in  its  music,  in  Chopin.  Take  up  a 
novel  of  Balzac ;  you  will  find  forms  of  intercourse, 
relations,  feminine  characters  and  personalities, 
which  make  up  a  world  apart,  having  no  slight 
power  of  attraction,  but  unable  to  lay  claim  to 
ideality.  Beatrix,  in  Les  Amours  forces,  by  Bal- 
zac (not  to  mention  his  imitators),  may  serve  as  a 
type.  It  is  precisely  so  with  Chopin.  Not  so  much 
ivhat  he  says,  as  how  he  says  it,  is  the  punctum 
saliens — the  main  point.  Whatever  seems  correct  to 
Parisians,  and  is  accepted  by  Parisians,  must  have 
universal  vitality,  and  a  frivolous  conception  of  the 
mutual  relation  of  the  sexes  plays  the  leading  role. 
A  more  fervent  feeling,  a  deeper  conception,  is  not 
precluded,  but  disappears  beneath  the  conventional 
purple  cover  under  which  this  very  exclusive  society 
seeks  to  prolong  its  artistic  existence. 
[141  ] 


Great  Piano  Virtuosos 

On  the  other  hand,  take  a  novel  by  Auerbach, 
Spielhagen,  or  any  of  our  best  German  authors.  Per- 
haps you  will  not  find  such  accomplished  people  as 
occupy  the  French  scene,  and  the  forms  of  inter- 
course will  not  prove  so  charming;  the  language 
will  hardly  be  modelled  on  the  patterns  which  re- 
ceive French  sanction ;  but  the  characters  will  belong 
to  ideality,  a  loftier  expression  of  life,  and  not  to  a 
material  point  of  view  masquerading  in  the  venal 
draperies  of  the  latest  fashion.  It  is  just  so  with  Hen- 
selt,  who  reaches  his  ideal  from  life  itself — a  true 
German  procedure.  Chopin  and  the  French  exalt  a 
life,  justified  solely  by  convention  and  example,  to 
an  ideal  in  which  they  live,  and  for  this  reason  recog- 
nize therein  their  own  artistic  justification  !  This 
tendency  is  unwholesome,  pathological.  However 
great  the  charm  which  its  procedures  possess,  when 
all  is  told  it  is  but  a  poisoning  with  refined  poisons, 
a  poisoning,  let  us  say,  by  burning  perfumed  tapers, 
whose  ßame  alone  is  an  emblem  of  real  life  ! 
This  refined  and  effeminate  character  of  modem 
French  literature — which  is  reflected,  as  it  were,  in 
Chopin,  finds  exceptions  in  his  Polonaises^  which  are 
(for  him)  the  higher,  more  objective  form  (his  Odes\ 
and  his  Ballades^  which  are  pictures  in  small  frames 
[  142  ] 


Adolph  Henselt 


(Sonnets — to  which  his  Nocturnes,  especially^  be- 
long). Such  exceptions  in  no  wise  alter  the  character 
of  the  phenomenon  as  a  whole ;  one  can  find  depths, 
and  genuine  pearls,  even  in  Balzac  and  his  epigones. 
Not  unconditionally,  not  without  reservations,  do 
we  classify  either  phenomenon  as  higher  than  the 
other ;  we  would  only  discriminate. 
H.  von  Grimm  ^3  called  Chopin  a  Weltschmerzler. 
Chopin  may  pass  for  a  UtIc  epicure ;  any  deprecia- 
tive  epithets  are  out  of  place  where  a  noble  spirit 
like  Chopin  is  concerned,  who,  like  Balzac,  like  all 
those  Parisian  exotics,  moved  in  a  self-constructed, 
self-imagined  milieu  (as  they  were  wont  to  say),  yet 
still  bore  the  unmistakable  mark  of  genius. 
Chopin  is,  with  few  exceptions,  a  charming  water- 
color  painter ;  Henselt  paints  al  fresco  even  when 
his  subject  appears  to  exclude  the  broader  style. 
In  the  difference  of  their  natures,  in  the  irrecon- 
cilable divergence  between  French  and  German  civi- 
lization (quia  ceterna  inter  ea  est  pugna !),  lies  the 
natural  reason  why  Henselt  does  not  play  Chopin 
as  that  master  ought  to  be  played ;  and  we  can 
but  agree  with  the  great  virtuoso,  that,  when  one 
is  a  Henselt,  one  has  a  right  to  play  as  one  likes, 
as  we  once  heard  him  remark. 
[143] 


Great  Piano  Virtuosos 

We  spoke  of  Henselt's  interpretation  of  Chopin, 
only  because  the  question :  "  How  do  you  under- 
stand Chopin  ?"  is  one  of  the  gravest  one  can  put 
to  a  representative  of  the  modern  piano.  In  Hen- 
selfs  interpretation  of  the  Mazurkas  and  the  Noc- 
turnes Chopin  (and  I  say  it  from  my  personal  ac- 
quaintance with  this  rare  nature)  would  have  felt 
as  little  at  home  as  would  a  Parisian  in  the  midst 
of  German  society,  because  a  certain  free-and-easy 
manner  is  found  in  this  society  even  in  its  highest 
circles,  and  may  be  ascribed  to  the  effect  of  German 
university  life,  which  permeates  and  influences  all 
grades  of  German  social  life. 

Henselfs  magnificently  powerful  art  of  playing 
showed  to  advantage  in  Chopin's  ornamental  pieces 
— which  are  in  Pompeian,  not  colossal  style,  and 
therefore  refractory  to  a  Titanic  conception.  With  a 
certain  pleasurable  consciousness  of  strength  con- 
fronted with  weakness,  Henselt  lets  the  time  take 
the  leading  part  in  the  Mazurkas ;  he  uses  his  heavy 
brush  for  fullness  of  tone,  where  the  whole  fabric 
is  crocheted  and  woven ;  his  ruhato  is  not  the  Chopin 
rubato,  it  is  a  shifting  of  the  tempo,  not  a  general 
dislocation  of  the  visual  angle  for  the  phenomenon 
as  a  whole,  like  the  effect  of  a  scene  viewed  through 
[  144  ] 


Adolph  Henselt 


the  small  end  of  an  opera-glass.  How  I  should  have 
enjoyed  witnessing  Chopin's  ecstasy,  could  he  have 
heard  Henselt !  have  heard  him  whisper,  lighten, 
thunder  through  his  A  minor  Etude  !  — This  render- 
ing of  Chopin  by  Henselt  is  so  extraordinary,  so 
indescribably  grand,  so  deeply  poetic,  so  infinitely 
idealized,  as  if  by  Oberon's  wand,  that  I  cannot  find 
words  to  depict  it.  One  finds  no  trace,  in  reading,  of 
these  never-resting  figures  flowing  from  diminished 
harmonies;  from  the  delicate  melismata  and  the 
ineffable  tones  produced  by  the  right  hand  to  the 
herculean  strokes  of  the  left,  by  Henselt,  they  are 
like  the  twinkling  of  stars,  the  unknown  language  of 
the  heights. 

^'Himmelhoch  jauchzend,  zu  Tode  betrübt!'''' 
Herein  lies  the  immeasurable  superiority  of  the 
German  over  the  Italian  nature  !  Taken  all  in  all, 
this  performance  of  Henselt's  is  one  of  the  grandest 
on  the  pianoforte,  as  such,  that  it  has  ever  been  my 
privilege  to  hear.  From  his  soul  the  artist  loves  this 
poem,  for  years  he  has  fostered  and  tended  it,  and 
warmed  it  on  his  breast ;  when  Henselt  plays  the 
A  minor  Etude,  he  plays  it  again  and  again,  for 
he  cannot  satiate  himself  with  the  euphony,  with 
whose  atmosphere  he  surrounds  himself!  If  there 
[  145  ] 


Great  Piano   Virtuosos 

is  any  one  performance  in  which  the  artist's  con- 
suming impulse  for  perfection  was  realized  I  believe 
it  is  this — and  my  opinion  is  the  result  of  years  of 
observation. 

Some  of  Henselt's  principal  compositions  are  his 
Concerto  in  F  minor  and  the  great  Duo  in  a  move- 
ment for  piano  and  horn,  in  B  minor.  The  Concerto 
is  the  climax  of  the  most  brilliant  concert-^rfli'^^ra, 
allied,  however,  to  a  good  musical  content.  \\Tiat 
one  might  be  tempted  to  regard  as  passage-work, 
is  solid  thought  in  figurate  style ;  but  the  execution 
is  so  difficult,  that  the  artist  was  never  satisfied  with 
his  own  rendering,  and  never  publicly  played  the 
work  in  St.  Petersburg.  Neither  was  he  ever  quite 
satisfied  with  an  accompaniment.  He  often  played 
the  Concerto  at  his  own  home,  and  such  a  colossal 
subjection  of  the  greatest  difficulties  (difficulties 
which  have,  however,  a  purpose)  laid  claim  to  the 
greatest  musical  interest.  The  Duo  likewise  required 
a  master-pianist  to  interpret  it.  In  our  opinion  it  is 
the  most  interesting  in  this  entire  literature,  as  an 
exponent  of  pianoforte-örarwra  in  combination  with 
a  second  instrument,  with  a  scope  gratifying  to  the 
interest  in  the  idea.  Neither  of  these  works  is  as 
widely  known,  as  it  deserves  to  be — but  this  is  not 
[  146  ] 


Adolph  Henselt 


caused  by  their  technical  difficulties  alone ;  his  resi- 
dence being  so  far  removed  from  Germany,  and  his 
strong  objection  to  publicity,  may  have  had  some- 
thing to  do  with  it.  Hans  von  Bl'ilow  played  the 
Concerto  in  St.  Petersburg,  and  esteemed  it  very 
highly.  It  is  like  an  apotheosis  of  the  old  school  in 
the  new  era,  a  task  for  the  well-intentioned  bravura 
pianist. 

When  Liszt  came  to  St.  Petersburg,  I,  with  both 
the  Counts  Wielhorski,  accompanied  him  to  Hen- 
selfs ;  we  found  the  artist  awaiting  us  and  ready  to 
comply  with  Liszfs  particular  request  that  he  should 
play  for  him.  Henselt  gave  us  first  his  own  reading 
of  the  Weber  Polacca  in  E.  I  watched  Liszt ;  his 
features  expressed  a  certain  astonishment.  After 
Henselt  had  finished  Liszt  said :  "  I  could  have  had 
velvet  paws  too,  if  I  had  wished  ! '"  (^"  Taurais  pu  me 
donner  ces  pattes  de  velours,  sijavais  voulu !'''') 
Liszt's  approval  was  so  unconditional  that  when 
— upon  his  second  visit  to  St.  Petersburg — I  re- 
marked that  Henselt  had  made  great  progress,  he 
replied :  "  Learn  that  an  artist  such  as  Henselt  does 
not  make  process r  ^Apprenez,  qiCun  artiste,  comme 
Henselt,  ne  fait  pas  des  progress)  It  was  a  reproof, 
— but  it  was  a  reproof  from  Liszt ! 
[147] 


Great  Piano   Virtuosos 

Henselt's  execution  of  Weber's  Polacca  is  a  phe- 
nomenon. It  is  a  union  of  the  grandest  power  and 
strength  with  the  greatest  tenderness,  in  the  inter- 
pretation of  the  poetic  thought.  With  the  very  first 
measure  (trill)  under  Henselt's  hands,  arises  a  vision 
of  a  brilliantly  lighted  Walhalla ;  kings  walk  there 
with  fair  women  to  whom  they  whisper  words  of 
love; — and  then  the  Trio  ! — Henselt  published  his 
Variations  to  this  inspiration  of  the  knightly  tone- 
poet,  to  this  foremother  of  Polonaises,  in  St.  Peters- 
burg. There  are  not  alone  reinforcements ;  inner 
parts,  more  sonorous  registers,  double  passages  in- 
stead of  mere  threads,  elevate  the  piece  upon  the 
shield  of  the  Olympian  present-day  pianoforte,  leav- 
ing to  the  original  a  certain  feeling  of  tonal  empti- 
ness, which,  in  its  time,  wasjidbiess  of  tone.  But  the 
thought,  the  creation,  of  Weber,  still  lives  immor- 
tal ! — What  Henselt  has  woven  into  the  work,  it  is 
like  the  journal  of  his  soul,  in  the  enjoyment  of  its 
intercourse  with  Weber  !  It  is  no  improvement,  no 
editio  emendat'ior,  but  the  homage  of  our  modern 
piano  —  after  fifty  years  of  development  —  to  its 
emancipator.  One  of  Henselfs  specialties  is  his  in- 
terpretation of  Weber,  to  whom,  after  all,  he  stands 
in  closest  human  affinity.  But  Henselt  discriminates 
[148] 


Adolph  Henselt 


in  Weber.  He  discriminates  between  the  value  of 
the  idea,  and  its  often  insufficient  reaHzation  in  the 
developments.  Hans  von  Bülow  is  of  the  same  mind  ; 
Tausig  manifested  the  same  in  his  arrangement  of 
the  Invitation ;  and  Liszt  has  just  published  his  ar- 
rangement of  Weber''s  piano-compositions.  At  pres- 
ent Henselt  is  busy  with  an  edition  of  his  own 
reading  of  the  solo  sonatas — a  reading  which  is  the 
result  of  a  lifetime  of  careful  study,  and  not  the 
passing  fancy  of  a  moment. 

Of  Weber's  Piano-quartet  and  Trio  (with  flute) ;  of 
the  Sonata  in  E  minor  (the  fourth) ;  of  the  Polacca 
and  the  Rondo  in  E  fiat ;  of  the  two  first  Piano- 
concertos  (in  C,  and  E  flat),  and  of  the  Variations, 
Henselt  refuses  to  take  any  notice.  On  the  other 
hand,  he  considei^  the  Sonatas  in  C  and  A  flat 
major,  and  in  D  minor,  the  Clarinet-sonata  in  E  flat, 
the  Invitation  (his  arrangement  of  which  appeared 
early  in  St.  Petersburg),  the  Momento  capriccioso, 
the  Polacca  in  E,  and  above  all  the  ConcertstilcJc,  the 
very  highest  expression  of  all  piano-poetry.  His 
interpretation  of  the  Concert stiich  is  extraordinär}^ 
and  if  we  look  at  Weber  fi'om  Henselt's  standpoint 
it  is  unapproachable  !  Henselt  throws  his  own  life, 
his  veiy  soul  and  being  into  Weber ;  he  does  not 
[149] 


Great  Piano  Virtuosos 

play  Weber  objectively,  and  probably  no  composer 
yields  more  readily  to  a  subjective  interpretation 
than  Weber — whose  work  we  understand  as  redeem- 
ing the  sensual  through  the  ideal.  Weber  is  love; 
flirtations,  French  or  other,  are  foreign  to  his  na- 
ture ! —  If  it  were  possible  to  lose  Germany,  we 
should  find  her  again  in  Der  Freischütz!  —  As 
Weber  is  in  Der  Freischütz,  so  is  he  in  his  piano- 
music.  Weber  is  the  last  of  the  knights ;  he  is  the 
Ideal,  ushered  by  the  Artist  into  the  prosy  monot- 
ony of  everyday  life, — that  image  of  Womanhood, 
which  even  the  prosiest  man  of  afFaii-s,  in  the  sack- 
cloth and  ashes  of  debit  and  credit,  will  not  wave 
away ! 

Thus  Henselt,  his  most  faithful  shield -bearer,  inter- 
prets him.  Henselfs  most  important  intei-pretations 
of  Weber  are  his  Polacca  in  E ;  the  Aß  at  major 
Sonata ;  the  Rondo  of  the  D  minor  Sonata,  where 
the  episode  in  G  (with  the  trills  in  the  song-figure 
in  the  bass)  is  expressed  in  a  manner  which  I  had 
not  believed  among  the  possibilities  of  the  piano  — 
it  always  sounded  to  me  like  an  unspeakably  lovely 
spring  song  ! — These  interpretations  of  Weber  cul- 
minated in  the  Concertstück ;  to  hear  Henselt  play 
this  is  an  event,  the  memory  of  which  one  carries 
[150] 


Adolph   Henselt 


through  life  !  He  gives  it  the  happiest  reading ;  it 
takes  on  quite  a  different  appearance — it  seems  to 
prophesy  the  future  of  the  piano  as  foreseen  from 
the  date  of  its  composition,  in  the  early  twenties. 
And  this  subversion  of  all  HummeFs  ideas  of  piano- 
playing  was  accomplished  by  a  pupil  of  Hummel, 
quantum  mutatiis  ab  illo !  In  order  to  render  the 
contrast  between  then  and  now  still  more  striking 
— to  give  to  the  affair  a  still  more  fateful  appear- 
ance than  it  bore  at  first  glance — let  us  add,  that 
Henselt  has  by  no  means  ceased  to  be  a  good 
Hummel  pupil ;  that  the  artist  does  his  best  by  the 
well-kno-v^Ti  sonatas  dedicated  to  Father  Haydn, 
the  Fantasia  in  Eßat  (Op.  18),  the  Quintet,  and 
the  Trios  by  Hummel ;  yet  ^^  these  works,  from 
Weber's  height,  are  like  the  toys  of  childhood. 
Thus  wondei-fully  is  Henselt's  nature  divided  be- 
tween the  doctrines  of  the  good  old  school,  and  the 
acquisitions  of  the  new  !  —  He  an-anged  the  Concert- 
stuck  to  be  played  without  accompaniment — that 
is,  he  so  successfully  altered  the  poem  that  one  does 
not  miss  the  orchestra,  but  is  carried  away  with 
admiration  of  the  composition.  Of  this,  but  one 
example.  Before  the  entrance  of  the  JVIarch  pp  (the 
return  of  the  warrior — in  the  distance)  where  the 
[151] 


Great   Piano   Virtuosos 

alluring  magic  of  the  bassoon-tone,  and  the  hushed 
vibration  of  the  stringed  instruments  (tremolo  pp), 
prepare  for  the  Marcia  which  ranks  alone  in  the 
history  of  music, — Henselt  introduces  volate,  short 
but  magnificent  forerunners  of  the  closing  presto  in 
six-eight,  which  are  strikingly  effective  and  quite  in 
the  spirit  of  the  situation,  for  they  foreshadow  the 
presto  figure — in  which  the  lady  of  the  castle  joy- 
fully embraces  her  returning  lord. — Weber  himself 
left  us  the  programme  of  this  piece  (in  the  biog- 
raphy by  his  son). 

Henselt's  arrangements  for  two  hands  (one  should 
have  at  least  four  to  play  them)  are  epoch-making 
in  "  arrangement ''-literature :  the  three  opera-over- 
tures by  Weber,  several  song-numbers  from  Der 
FreischütZy  Oheron^  and  Euryanthe  and  the  Corio- 
lanus  Overture  by  Beethoven.  No  orchestra  would 
be  able  to  render  the  Ohcron  overture  with  the  fine 
nuances^  with  the  flowingly  blended  euphony,  with 
the  intricate  meaning,  with  which  Henselt  imbues 
this  instrumental  tale !  Perfection  of  this  kind  is 
possible  only  to  Unity  in  the  Executant,  not  to 
any  group  of  factors,  despite  the  advantage  of  dis- 
similar tone-colors  in  the  orchestra.  This  interpre- 
tation is,  indeed,  wholly  incomparable. 
[  1^^  ] 


Adolph  Henselt 


At  rare,  gracious  moments,  for  his  own  enjoyment, 
Henselt  plays  the  Weber  operas  four-handed ;  at 
these  times  it  is  easier  to  be  his  audience  than  his 
partner.  His  "Agathas"  and  "Annchens"  were 
better  than  any  I  ever  heard  on  any  other  stage, 
and  I  have  heard  them  all.  What  shall  I  say  of  his 
Gypsy  choinises  from  Preciosa  ?  Astounding ;  why 
Henselt  never  went  to  the  theatre,  became  quite 
clear !  That  in  Weber  the  artist  is  eclectic,  is  his 
right  as  a  virtuoso ;  for  others  (and  I  think  they 
have  been  the  gainers  thereby),  the  piano-quartets 
and  trio,  and  the  other  compositions  which  Henselt 
rejected,  have  become  life-long  friends.  Are  not  the 
Sonates  progressives  et  agreahles  (in  which  only 
the  French  conventional  title  can  be  found  fault 
with) — arranged  for  four  hands  from  the  too  meagre 
original  for  piano  and  violin — operas  in  disguise? 
Is  not  everything  comprehended  within  the  bounds 
of  Weber's  original  Pieces  for  four  hands  ? 
Henselt  considers  the  Clarinet-sonata  in  E  flat  We- 
ber's greatest  work  in  respect  of  completeness  and 
unity  of  design,  and  he  arranged  the  charming  piece 
for  two  pianos.  On  the  second  he  gives  the  clarinet- 
part  in  his  happy  style  of  accompaniment — a  style 
which  no  one  else  could  attempt.  By  this  means  he 
[153] 


Great   Piano   Virtuosos 

obtains  a  unity  and  fullness  of  tone,  and  a  general 
effect,  by  which  the  work  gains  in  a  high  degree. 
The  artist  carries  this  second  part  in  his  heart — he 
never  wrote  it  down.  He  also  accompanied  several 
of  his  great  Etudes  on  a  second  piano,  and  in  St. 
Petersburg  he  had  a  second  part  to  the  Cramer 
Etudes  engraved.  The  artist  considers  the  Etudes 
by  Church-Father  Cramer,  which  contrast  so  strongly 
with  the  Weber  Muse,  such  great  works  of  art,  that 
he  produces  them  in  St.  Petersburg,  where  his  pre- 
dilection is  well  known,  on  two  pianos  as  full- 
fledged  concert-pieces ;  and  the  secondo  part  so  skill- 
fully adapted  to  the  primo  (the  unaltered  original), 
that  one  can  hardly  believe  they  were  ever  played 
otherwise.  To  us  these  productions  of  Cramer's 
Etudes  appear,  viewed  as  repertory-pieces,  like  the 
comments  of  a  philologist  on  a  classic  author.  They 
are  a  culmen  in  the  pedagogic  fruit-garden ;  from 
an  artistic  standpoint,  I  never  enjoyed  them — caii- 
didus  imperii.  But  how  old  Church-Father  Cramer 
(Beda  venerahilis)  would  have  rejoiced  to  find  him- 
self so  honored  after  a  lapse  of  seventy  years  !  How 
delicately  and  tastefully  Henselt  handled  them  ;  to 
invent  a  second  part  to  the  polyphonic  compositions 
of  Cramer — always  so  complete  in  themselves — is 
[  154  ] 


Adolph  Henselt 


a  problem  for  the  connoisseur.  It  is  a  far  gi'eater 
achievement  than  that  of  Gounod,  who  composed 
a  second  paii:  to  the  well-known  Bach  prelude. 
Think  of  the  variety  of  form  and  rhythm,  of  expres- 
sion and  conception,  contained  in  the  Cramer 
Etudes  !  It  was  an  opus  desparatum  ;  the  thought 
of  such  a  work  could  have  occun'ed  only  to  a  Ger- 
man mind — and  only  the  gi^eatest  love  for  the  com- 
position and  the  pleasure  of  solving  such  a  difficult 
problem  could  have  induced  him  to  attempt  it. 
On  several  of  the  celebrated  Moscheles  Etudes  (that 
in  A  flat,  for  instance),  Henselt  has  also  bestowed  the 
blessing  of  the  modern  piano,  and  paid  the  greatest 
compliment  to  Moscheles  by  playing  these  varia- 
tions to  him  in  Leipzig.  How  astounded  the  neat 
little  man  must  have  been  (we  knew  him  very  well) 
to  see  Henselt  hurl  his  Achilles  spear  into  the  midst 
of  his  compositions  ! 

The  great  German  artist  to  whom  this  sketch  is 
devoted  despised  ostentation  and  avoided  publicity, 
yet  he  won  renown  in  the  German  fatherland,  and 
we  believe  these  hints  of  his  experiences  in  a  foreign 
land  will — to  the  German  reader — form  a  welcome 
contribution  to  the  history  of  the  piano  of  our  day. 
The  compass  of  a  book  is  necessary  for  a  detailed 
[  155  ] 


Great  Piano   Virtuosos 

description   of  such   an   important  artist  as  Adolf 
Henselt. 

Therefore  we  do  not  pretend  to  have  exhausted  our 
subject,  and  I  can  but  assure  the  friendly  reader 
that,  to  the  best  of  our  ability,  we  have  endeavored 
to  draw  in  outlines  (as  the  English  say)  one  of  the 
most  remarkable  artistic  phenomena  of  this  century. 
In  closing,  let  us  glance  for  a  moment  at  the  out- 
ward appearance  of  the  artist — which  is  oftener 
mistaken  for  an  exponent  of  the  inner  man,  than 
one  might  think. 

When  Henselt  first  came  to  St.  Petersburg,  he  was 
a  perfect  example  of  the  German  youth,  of  the  Hun, 
the  Germanic  hero  confident  of  success,  without 
foreign  polish.  There  was  a  suggestion  o^  Siegfried 
in  his  character;  one  could  read  something  of  the 
Nibelungen  in  his  deep,  speaking  eyes — young  men 
and  maidens  have  been  intoxicated  by  reading  the 
legend,  both  here  and  yonder  !  Throughout  Ger- 
many one  finds  many  portraits  of  the  artist  taken 
at  this  period.  In  one  especially  (which  is  taken  full 
face)  he  looks  you  frankly  in  the  eyes  and  you  dis- 
cern the  romantic  trait  which  is  so  prominent  in 
his  character — the  never-satisfied  soul  continually 
striving  to  reach  the  ideal  of  absolute  perfection. 
[  156] 


Adolph  Henselt 


Henselt  is  an  ego,  a  distinct  personality.  Like  Liszt 
and  Chopin,  he  is  the  fountain-head  of  a  current,  a 
tendency,  on  the  pianoforte,  and  his  own  ancestor. 
It  would  be  impossible  to  imitate  Henselt's  repro- 
duction, because  it  is  specifically  individual ;  for  this 
reason  Henselt  is  without  successors,  and  the  best 
of  his  pupils  in  Russia,  though  true  virtuosi,  repro- 
duce only  his  material  side,  not  his  heart,  which  re- 
mains his  own,  being  inseparable  from  his  total  per- 
sonality. 

If  any  one  ever  approached  Weber  at  the  piano,  it 
is  Henselt;  he,  like  Weber,  is  a  spirit — a  cosmos 
of  ideas,  such  as  one  can  find  only  in  ages  of  the 
organic  life  of  art.  There  can  never  be  another 
Weber,  for  the  reason  that  he  lived  at  a  time  when 
people  had  leisure  for  contemplation  and  possessed 
greater  power  of  thought  and  feeling  than  in  our 
day :  we  find  it  difficult  to  believe  that  such  a  time 
ever  existed  ! 

It  is  not  alone  in  his  fruitful  treatment  of  the  piano 
that  Henselt  resembles  Weber;  it  is  not  in  the 
tenths  and  the  chord -stretches,  from  which  Henselt, 
like  Weber,  reaps  advantage ; — it  is  in  the  spirit, 
influencing  the  soul  from  the  German  soul,  and  not 
from  speculative  musical  ideas ;  it  is  the  life  of  the 
[157] 


Great  Piano  Virtuosos 

German  heart,  which  is  sufficient  unto  itself,  and 
courts  nothing  foreign ;  as  the  romantic  poet  has 
it: 

Überwunden  von  der  Schönheit, 
Will  ich  ewig  nach  dir  ziehen.  * 
Henselfs  nature  suggests  an  indestiTictible  sense  of 
youthfulness ;  such  a  nature  cannot  grow  old,  it 
must  be  and  remain  like  itself  alone.  In  Germany 
one  sees  among  gray-haired  statesmen  a  like  youth- 
fulness  of  thought;  it  is  a  legacy  of  the  German 
academic  life  with  them,  but  with  our  artist  it  is 
the  German  soul : — 

— in  dem  die  Welt  sich. 
Die  Ewige  spiegelt ! 


•  Kaiser  Octavianus. 

[  158  J 


Notes 


Notes 


Note  1 


Des  Leibes  bist  du  ledig: 
Gott  sei  der  Seele  gnädig.' 


Note  2 

In  Riga,  since  1828,  Der  Freischütz  had  been  a  per- 
sonality with  whom  all  had  social  intercourse.  The 
text  was  familiar  language:  "I  have  the  Overture 
for  four  hands/'  caused  peremptory  invitations  to 
evening  entertainments.  No  barrel-organ  but  played 
"Und  ob  die  Wolke  sich  verhülle;"  no  bowling-alley 
where  the  "Jägerchor"  was  not  heard;  no  dance-hall 
that  did  not  use  the  Waltzes;  no  bread-and-butter 
Miss  who  did  not  know  "Jungfernkranz"  and  '^veil- 
chenblaue Seide;"  no  marriageable  maiden  who  did 
not  know  "Kommt  ein  schlanker."  The  hunter,  com- 
ing home  with  only  two  small  snipe,  excused  himself 
with:  "Alles  was  ich  könnt'  erschauen;"  the  husband, 
delayed  by  a  glass  of  punch  at  the  club,  with:  "Schwach 
war  ich,  obwohl  kein  Bösewicht."  —  "Doch  hast  du 
auch  vergeben  den  Vorwurf,  den  Verdacht.'*"  was  the 
last  question  the  wife  asked,  before  going  to  sleep. 
Pigeons,  long  past  all  dangers  of  being  shot  at,  em- 
ployed an  allegorical:  "Schiess  nicht,  ich  bin  die 
Taube!"  "Die  süsse  Stimme  ruft,"  said  the  tenor,  go- 

[161] 


Great  Piano  Virtuosos 

ing  to  the  duet  at  the  piano;  " könnt'  ich  das  zu  hoffen 
wagen?"  sang  every  contented  one.  "Samiel  hilf!" 
was  an  entertaining  little  society  cry;  "Bei  den  Pforten 
der  Hölle,"  the  confirmation  of  every  promise;  not  a 
nail  was  hammered  in  without:  "Schelm,  halt'  fest." 
Women,  who  in  no  wise  doubted  the  possibility  that 
even  an  unloaded  gun  might  go  off,  stood  their  ground 
bravely  for  three  shots  in  Der  Freischütz.  Der  Freischütz 
travelled  even  into  the  country  frus  evolavitj;  every 
tree-trunk  transfonned  itself  at  evening  into  the  hunter 
"der  im  Dunkeln  wacht."  Such  a  union  of  all  forces, 
all  classes,  all  professions,  as  never  before!  All  had  a 
personal  interest  in  Weber's  music,  and  the  roles  dis- 
tributed as  follows:  every  proprietor  of  an  estate,  was 
Ottokar,  who  led  in  the  hunt;  every  forester  was  Kimo; 
every  lover  of  the  god  Bacchus  was  Kaspar;  each  and 
every  lover,  with  or  without  a  gun,  impersonated  Majr; 
the  entire  feminine  population,  were  either  Aimchejis 
or  Agathes  without  tertium  comparatioiiis.  Such  was  our 
Robin  des  hois!  How  much  of  that  could  a  Frenchman 
appreciate? 

Notes 

Vien  qua,  Dorina  bella ;  Theme  russe ;  Th^me  original ; 

and  the  Joseph  Variations. 

Note  J,, 

See    Lenz :    Beethoven    et    ses   trois   styles,    Sonata   Op. 

[  162  ] 


Notes 

26,  where  I  endeavored  to  give  a  sketch  of  this  curious 
pianist. 

Note  5 

"  Die  J  bird,  or  eat !  "  [Root,  hog,  or  die !] 

Note  6 
Supremacy. 

Note  7 

The  term  Lorette  is  two  or  three  centuries  old ;  it  has 
come  into  vogue  latterly  through  Alphonse  Karr.  — 
Translator  s  Note. 

Note  8 

False  melancolique  (A  minor).  In  the  eighth  measure^ 
highest  part,  occur  the  notes  d  (quarter)  d  g  sharp 
(quarter)  over  the  first  d  ;  by  taking  g  sharp  and  c,  but 
6  to  g  and  d  sharp,  a  close  results  (one  part).  It  has  a 
fine  effect  to  repeat  the  passage  at  the  reprise. 

Note  9 

See  Lenz :  Beethoven,  eine  Kunststudie,  Part  iv,  at  Op. 

95,  p.  266. 

Note  10 

Compare,  in  this  regard.  Op.  10,  No.  12;  Op.  25,  No. 
7;  Op.  34,  No.  2  ;  Op.  51 ;  Op.  64,  No.  3,  in  the  Mazur- 
kas,— among  others.  Op.  SS,  No.  4,  B  minor,  where  the 
left  hand  has  an  unaccompanied  solo. 

Note  11 

See  the  Signale  for  the  Musical  World  (1868,  Nos.  37 
[163] 


Great  Piano  Virtuosos 

to  39),  wherein  my  musical  conscience  called  upon  me 
to  take  up  the  cudgels  for  Weber. 

Note  12 

Humor,  a  devotional,  artistic  wantonness,  distin- 
guishes the  German  from  the  Southron.  Of  this  specific 
racial  difference  the  Times  once  wrote:  ^'The  French 
have  no  humor.  That  poor,  pitiful  stuff  of  theirs,  called 
wit,  is  nothing  but  thin,  sour,  blue-colored  claret — a 
very  different  thing  from  the  full,  rich  port-wine  fla- 
vored growth,  dear  to  Englishmen." 

Note  13 

In  the  Neue  freie  Presse  of  Sept.  1,  1871,  in  a  supple- 
ment devoted  to  the  Bonn  celebration.  Dr.  Nohl  col- 
lected, with  praiseworthy  zeal,  some  communications  of 
Holz,  the  second  violin  of  the  Schuppanzigh  Quartet, 
in  the  time  of  Beethoven,  whose  amanuensis  he  was, 
and  to  whom  the  master  revealed  much.  I  carried  on  a 
diligent  con-espondence  with  Holz ;  he  copied  for  me, 
out  of  his  musical  diary,  all  the  information  Beethoven 
had  given  him  relating  to  the  last  five  quartets — and 
in  these  Holz  had  played  the  second  violin  and  had, 
therefore,  stood  next  the  composer.  These  letters 
which  Holz  wrote  me,  being  a  valuable  source  of  infor- 
mation, I  turned  over  to  the  Imperial  Public  Library 
in  St.  Petersburg;  but  the  contents  are  given  word  for 
word  in  the  sixth  volume  of  my  book  Beethoven, 
[  164  ] 


Notes 

eine  Kunststudie  in  connection  with  Op.  127,  the  first 
of  the  five  last  quartets.  It  is  the  only  information  we 
possess  relating  to  these  Sybilline  books,  and  we  hiojv 
that  it  is  genuine. 

I  met  Dr.  Nohl  at  the  Secular  Festival  at  Vienna  in 
December,  1870;  he,  S6row,  and  I  sat  together  at  the 
concert,  and  Serow  told  me — probably  for  the  sake  of 
saying  something  agreeable — that  Dr.  Nohl  had  told 
him  that  he  had  gotten  most  of  his  information  about 
Beethoven  from  my  book.  Consequently,  Dr.  Nohl  at 
least  knows  my  book;  it  is  astonishing  that  Holz,  who 
gave  me  the  information  which  is  printed  in  my  book, 
should  also  have  given  the  same  data  to  some  one  else, 
without  once  mentioning  the  fact  to  me.  I  was  really 
but  the  medium,  to  preserve  in  a  permanent  form,  the 
data  obtained  from  Holz  by  Frau  Fanny  Lingbauer 
(nee  Tonsing),  at  that  time  living  in  Pesth.  I  had,  for 
some  years,  carried  on  a  correspondence  with  Frau 
Lingbauer,  who  was  an  enthusiastic  connoisseur  of 
Beethoven  literature.  It  was  not  at  all  easy  for  this 
excellent  lady  to  obtain  from  the  kind-hearted  Holz 
— who  not  only  wrote  badly,  but  expressed  himself 
badly,  too — these  important  facts  relating  to  the  last 
five  quartets.  I  herewith  offer  Frau  Lingbauer  my  re- 
newed thanks.  It  was  not  decreed  that  I  should  be- 
come acquainted  with  my  kind  Beethoven  correspon- 

[165] 


Great   Piano   Virtuosos 

dent  of  Vienna  and  Pesth.  My  immature,  but  well-in- 
tentioned first  book  about  Beethoven,  published  in  the 
French  language :  Beethoven  et  ses  trois  styles  (St.  Peters- 
burg, 1852,  Bernard,  2  vols.;  two  pirated  editions  — 
Stapleaux,  Brussels,  1854;  Lavinee,  Paris,  1855),  was  in 
such  demand  in  1852,  that  through  the  Austrian  Em- 
bassy in  St.  Petersburg  I  received  from  Frau  Lingbauer 
a  Beethoven  trophy — one  of  those  ingeniously  photo- 
graphed groups  of  Beethoven  relics,  consisting  of  the 
best  bust  of  Beethoven,  his  Lichnowski  violin  and  the 
lithograph  of  the  master  at  work  upon  his  Missa  Solem- 
nisj  an  autograph  from  the  last  quartets,  and  a  portrait 
of  our  good  Holz.  This  photograph  of  the  Beethoven 
relics,  so  often  copied,  was  one  of  two  original  large 
quarto  photographs,  and  I  presented  it  to  the  library 
of  the  Imperial  Hofsängerkapelle  in  St.  Petersburg. 
As  to  the  data  of  Dr.  Nohl  which  appeared  in  the 
Neue  freie  Presse,  I  may  say:  Jirst, — that  we  ought  at 
last  to  leave  off  wTiting — according  to  Schindler  and 
Holz — "I'oeuvre  le  plus  accomp//,"  as  Beethoven  called 
the  Mass  in  D  in  a  letter  to  Cherubini,  since  it  should  be 
called  "  la  plus  accomp/ie  ;  "  and  here  there  is  no  reason 
for  the  diplomatic  conservation  of  a  grammatical  error. 
Secondly, —  the  Tenth  Symphony  was  not,  as  Dr.  Nolil  said, 
in  C  minor;  it  was  sketched  in  Eflat  major  (the  Scherzo 
in  C  minor  and  C  major).  Holz  sent  me  a  copy  of  the 

[166] 


Notes 


sketches  for  it,  and  since  the  beginning  of  the  world 
there  has  not  been  a  greater  intellectual  loss  to  de- 
plore than  that  of  the  Tenth  Symphony.  Thirdly, — the 
slow  middle  movement  in  the  F  minor  Quartet  is  no  ex- 
traordinary Adagio,  as  Dr.  Nohl  writes,  but  an  extraor- 
dinary Allegretto  (ma  non  troppoj,  and  this  sign  of  Beet- 
hoven's is  specific,  and  important  to  the  proper  reading 
of  the  composition.  That  which  Dr.  Nohl  says  further 
on:  "At  night,  when  the  heavens  were  alight  with  mil- 
lions of  stars,  Beethoven  walked  across  the  fields  at 
Baden;  his  glance  swept  questioningly  and  longingly 
into  endless  space" — is  more  important  and  significant 
than  anything  which  has  hitherto  appeared  about  the 
immortal  quartets;  and  these  communications  of  Dr. 
Nohl  are,  altogether,  of  high  value.  But,  in  comparison 
to  Beethoven's  own  utterances,  we  all — who  have  la- 
bored with  endless  toil  in  these  spheres — are  but  as 
dust! 

Note  U 

The  title  of  a  satirical  publication  printed  in  Berlin. 

Note  15 

Meyerbeer  said:  "Can  one  reduce  women  to  nota- 
tion.'' They  would  breed  mischief,  were  they  emanci- 
pated from  the  measure!"  —  See  No.  37  of  the  IS^eue 
Berliner  Musik-Zeitwig,  1871  ("Berliner  Bekannstschaf- 
ten"). 

[167] 


Great  Piano  Virtuosos 

Note  16 

A  fact  which   I  think  I  was  the  first  to  point  out  (in 

Beethoven,  eine  Kunststudie,  vol.  iii.,  p.  152,  touching  Op. 

15). 

Note  17 

A  Russian  coin,  value  about  77  cents. 

Note  18 

See  Beethoven,  eine  Kunststiidie,  Part  4,  pp.  159  et 
seq.;  an  entire  little  monograph — yet  not  so  much, 
after  all!  — 

"In  seiner  Werkstatt  träume  sich  der  Künstler 

Zum  Bildner  einer  schönem  Welt!'' 

Note  19 

Schiller :  "  Was  die  Mode  streng  getheilt.'* 

Note  W 

These   essays  were  written  about   1868.  —  Translators 

Note. 

Note  n 

For  a  proper  appreciation  of  Henselt's  triumph,  and 
of  the  peculiar  situation  in  St.  Petersburg,  it  must  be 
observed,  that  for  thirty  years  Charles  Mayer  had  held 
the  first  place  in  St.  Petersburg,  and  did  not  lack  sup- 
porters, and  yet  was  never  able  to  play  even  once 
before  the  Court  (the  height  of  his  ambition)  ;  he  finally 
left  St.  Petersburg  and  went  to  Dresden,  where  he 
died. 

[  168  ] 


Notes 


Note  22 

The  chord  referred  to  is  only  the  well-known  horn- 
passage  in  the  Eroica,  strengthened  by  the  greatest 
conceivable  dissonance  ;  in  other  words,  it  is  a  cumuhts 
of  dominant  and  tonic,  motivated  by  the  idea  with 
which  Beethoven  was  filled.  The  opinion  of  my  dear 
friend,  C.  F.  Weitzmann  of  Berlin,  I  cannot  agree  with. 
He  thinks  that  the  chord  is  not  an  independent  one, 
but  a  pedal-point  figure  like  all  chords,  built  up  of  suc- 
cessive thirds,  which  overstep  the  limits  of  an  octave. 
See  the  Justification  of  the  Chord  by  the  Idea,  in  Beet- 
hoven, eine  Kunststudie,  Lenz,  vol.  vi.,  page  194. 

Note  2S 

French  Civilization  and  German  Humanism  from  the 
book  lately  published  in  Berlin — a  book  full  of  instinic- 
tion  and  of  deep  thought :  "  Vaterländische  Erinnerungen 
und  Betrachtungen  über  den  Krieg  von  1870-1871.'' 


[  169 


D.     B.     UPDIKE 

THE     MERRYMOUNT     PRES 

104     CHESTNUT     ST. 

BOSTON 


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